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

he was the best-educated of the “brethren” of that time. (Besides his younger brother Johann Wieler who died in Romania in 1889, he was the only one of the original brethren who had a good command of spoken and written Russian.) In 1867 he rejoined the Krimmer Mennonite Church and now is a member of the United Brethren in Christ in North America. How this brother, talented above many, who for a while with Claassen in St. Petersburg rendered no mean service to the church, assesses that time and himself during that time, is not known to us. (Compare #191-194.) Free and Exuberant Movement 279 a) Johann Claasaen, Liebe- nau-Kuban (1820-1876). c) Jakob Reimer, Felsental- Gnadenfeld-Wiesenfeld (1817-1891). e) Philipp Isaak, Tiege (1832-1879). d) Abraham Unger, Einlage, first elder of the Einlage M3. Church (1820-1880). jr' a f) Minister Johann Johann Wieler (1840-1890). 280 THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH §127 Temporary home of Elder Heinrich Huebert and the itinerant minister Christian Schmidt in Blumenort, Molotschna, about 1870. XIX. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH IN THE CHORTITZA DISTRICT KNOWN AS THE “EINLAGE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH” 1. Historical Background: Kronsweide a) This church had a unique and independent historical development which we will present in essence according to the careful “accounts” of Brother Heinrich Epp, Andreasfeld, which he worte for the above-mentioned “History of the Mennonite Brethren Church” for January 6, 1885. We will also use letters and notes written by the brethren: Elder Abram Unger and Elder Aron Lepp. (We abbreviate freely without indicating omissions.) b) We begin this account with an excerpt from the diary of the deceased Br. Abram Unger, formerly elder of the Einlage Church. The Mennonites, who during their origin at the time of Menno and thereafter for a period of 200 years had the honor of suffering persecution for Christ’s sake, and of whom thousands will shine with their martyr’s crown, have in later times, when the persecutions ceased, sunk into utter The Einlage M.B. Church 281 spiritual decay. At the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, several hundred of these Mennonite families settled in Southern Russia where they have lived for half a century according to their traditional Mennonite life style but without true life from God [with the exception of the brethren among the “7000” in Israel which even Elijah did not know; compare above 157: “Pastoral letters of a Chortitza Elder,” etc.]. Every Sunday one of the copied sermons was read, sermons prepared earlier by ministers of whom some had been believers. However, renewals and conversions occurred so rarely that little notice was taken of them. Then it pleased the Lord, in the year 1853, to awaken from the sleep of sin, first of all one man in the village of Kronsweide, Chortitza District, and then th