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

nsumer The M.B. Church 1885-1910 541 co-operative with store, one cheese-making co-operative (the above), one grape-growing co-operative (the above vineyard). Associations for educational and cultural purposes: one music association; one reading association with a lending library. There were two resident physicians and one druggist. Public buildings: one church building of the Mennonite Church (since then also a meeting place of the "'Temple” Church), two three-room schools (now four-room and five-room), one area administration office (volost administration), one grain storehouse, one music hall (belonging to the above-mentioned association). The property value of the entire colony (assessed certainly in keeping with character- istic Mennonite care and modesty): 800,000 rubles (1904), i.e., 400 rubles per person, and 2,000 rubles per family (reckoning five persons per family). At the beginning of the year 1904 the volost donated 1,000 rubles to the Red Cross. Proportionately there is hardly another Mennonite group that has received as much honor and reward from the government as the leading men of this colony (including even the conferring of nobility or heredity honorary citizen status), beginning with the decoration of Johann Claassen. 336 3. The school system of this settlement is a model for all Mennonite colonies. Each of the two villages today has a four-room public school. Boys attend school between the ages of eight and fourteen or seventeen, girls between the ages of eight and twelve or fifteen. In 1904 all (?) of the six teachers were members, or children of members (adherents), of the M.B. Church. For twenty-four years (until 1902) David Johann Claassen was principal teacher in Velikokniashesk, first in the private school, and since 1881, in the combined school. He was a graduate of the Halbstadt Secondary School with a tutor’s diploma. Beginning in 1880, his colleague was Johann Jakob Friesen 337 of Altenau, Molotschna, also a graduate of the teacher-training school in Halbstadt. Since 1889, Gerhard Jakob Giesbrecht was the third teacher, and in 1904 he became principal. (He had studied medicine at the University of Kharkov but because of illness was not able to complete his studies.) At present he is a private citizen. In Alexanderfeld Isaak Fast was for many years teacher in the one-room school. Fast came from Gnadenfeld, and had been a student of Heinrich Franz, Sr. Previously he had taught in the association school in Ohrloff for several years and then had been teacher in a Russian “Semstvo” school. Fast, now a private citizen, was, and is presently, the leader of the “Temple Chinch.” He is a man of outstanding intelligence, and is the writer’s warm personal friend and intense religious opponent. Between 1887 and 1910 Johann Fast taught here. He was the son of Johann Fast who died in Rueckenau. He, too, graduated from the teacher training school in Halbstadt, and was an ordaine