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

the negative side of Claassen— he did promote emotional fanaticism for a time in a manner I still cannot understand. I have all the hundreds of letters and numerous other articles and I believe I know him even better than you do. You could never rise to more independent criticism of him because you loved him so dearly and love him still. §232 502 THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH Because you were so deeply impressed by his personality, you could never allow yourself an objective judgment of him. That is the impression I gather from all your interesting and instructive accounts. That Claassen could go along with Kappes against Wuest, is something that can never be forgiven a historical figure like him (God and the brother can forgive him, but not the historian), just as David’s sin and Hezekiah’s folly, Luther’s flirtation with the princes, Menno’s cowardice in the face of the fanatics, the so-called ‘harsh Banners,’ and the lengthy blindness of the distinguished Wuest concerning the nature of that same Kappes, cannot be forgiven). But as surely as David, Hezekiah, Luther and Menno belong among the greatest of the world’s men, so surely Claassen belongs among the greatest of men in Russian Mennonite society, and for the Mennonite Brethren Church he is no less a figure than is Zinzendorf for the revived Brethren Church of the Bohemian-Moravians. Claassen is a much greater man than you make him out to be. I say that, convinced that I know him best in all his weaknesses, but also in the totality of his intellectual stature, that is, through the gigantic literary legacy (gigantic for a farmer, even though very intelligent), in the way he borders on the childish and the exalted in a biblical kind of open-heartedness, even when that open-heartedness turns out to his disadvantage (for the status of his person). It is my conviction that the greatest men in our society (if one may speak of greatness in our microscopic Mennonite world) are Johann Comies, 300 Johann Claassen and Bernhard Harder. Comies’ achievement embraces Mennonite agriculture and education, Harder’s achievement the present Mennonite pulpit, and Claassen’s achievement— our Brethren Church, which I, despite all the criticism which I have directed at it from time to time (and which I do not retract), consider to be the salvation of Mennonitism in its purely Christian significance and its final purpose. 301 There were better-educated men, more gifted men, men of greater personality, men who at first glance were more impressive than the two latter ones, but there was no one who had this insight in such depth and breadth, who had this commitment to a concept, and, what is most important— who left such large footprints for us to follow. After Claassen the important man in our M.B. Church is Abraham Unger, who was so differently disposed with respect to outside movements. He is very much like Claassen in his sacrificial dedication to an ideal, even