THE MENNONITE BROTHERHOOD IN RUSSIA (1789 - 1910), P. M. Friesen, 1911

assen, Reimer and their adherents on the one hand, and the two Schmidts and their adherents on the other, during which Lenzmann, who was acting as mediator and judge in his capacity as elder, was not a little tormented. By 1858 the rupture was complete. Deeply hurt, Claassen, Reimer and their group withdrew from the school, or as they have since maintained, were expelled. In the same year the spiritual-brotherly ties between Claassen and Reimer, on the one hand, and Nicholas Schmidt and Lenzmann on the other— i.e., 30 the two groups led by these two men— were completely severed although the formal institutional-ecclesiastical break did not immediately take place. It followed somewhat later, in 1869/60, with the withdrawal of Claassen and his adherents. (In 1862/63 the formation of the "Temple Church” followed. It was between Schmidt and his adherents, the "Templers,” and Lenzmann, Franz and their “strict church” followers that the worst quarrel and most severe rupture took place.) f) In 1861 Johannes Lange replaced Franz as teacher; along with him came his brother Friedrich. Supported by well-to-do friends, Franz started his own school in Gnadenfeld, while Johann and Friedrich Lange carried on a very successful instructional program for a few years in the imposing building 31 of the former “Brotherhood School,” now known as the “Tempel School.” At the same time, the school served as the focal point and meeting place of the “Friends of Jerusalem,” “Templers,” or “Hoffmanites,” whose real apostle was the energetic and brilliantly gifted Johann Lange. (Hermann Sudermann was totally displaced and forgotten: being a quiet and modest person, he was quickly forgotten during the period of embittered strife. He continued to live in Berdiansk as a private citizen and moved to the United States with the first emigrants in 1874. We have no further information regarding his subsequent activities.) g) Upon the insistence of the Gnadenfeld congregation and the Mennonite Council of Church Leaders, the Lange brothers were forced to 108 IN RUSSIA 1789-1860 leave their posts for administrative reasons, whereupon, together with the most important “Templers,” they left for the Caucasus where they founded “Tempelhof” and Orbelianovka in the vicinity of Piatigorsk. Here they enthusiastically continued their educational endeavors. Even Hausknecht went with them. We have attempted to sketch briefly— around a few dates and in anticipation of what is to follow— the history of the Mennonite “Templers.” h) The extent to which personal sympathy and antipathy, jealousy, injustice, religious narrow-mindedness and factionalism played into the quarrel between the two, then three groups— the extent to which adherence to principles and honest idealism were at work, is difficult to say. Much, though not everything, is clarified in Chapters XI to XXV, the history of the M.B. Church. At any rate, Claassen believed himself to have