The Great Trek of the Russian Mennonites to Central Asia, 1880-1884, Fred Richard Belk, 1976

the water.*® Képpental’s schoolhouse was at the south end of the village on the east side of the road, and at a higher elevation than the rest of the houses. At the school the street took a turn and led eastward. Across the road from the school was the district office. The church, built in 1866, stood immediately east of the district office’? and was called Képpental-Orloff Mennonite Church after the two villages that cooperated in its construction.*! The first elder of the congregation was Johann Wall, a companion of Epp, and David Hamm, important in later controversies, became minister. This church left a strong impression on one young man who later wrote: I always entered the church with a great deal of awe. It was so quiet and awesome especially when the elder came out of the vestry (Ohmstiibchen) into the church with the words, “The peace of God be with you all,’ and when the procession of venerable ministers took their places. How dignified it all was and what an impression it made on the whole congregation. .. .” Senior Epp, whose family belonged to this congregation, Wall and Hamm, all had strong convictions concerning nonresistance and ad- hered to the pietistic-chiliastic teachings of Jung-Stilling and others.” The two little villages of Képpental and Hahnsau were centers of millenarian enthusiasm. For the very development of the colony from the beginning, millennialism was as important a factor as was escaping military service. Senior Epp later reminisced about the mi- gration and the “fanatic admixture that came from Prussia.’ A serious controversy arose early when Elder Wall became so fanatical that Senior Epp had to try to dissuade him from his position to avoid a premature dissolving of the community over the millennium. The reason he gave was that Wall had become too fanatical about the millennium and was illogical in his biblical presentations. Hamm, later a close friend of Claas Epp, Jr., and Martin Klaassen, on whose property the church stood, resented Epp’s attack of Wall and began preaching Wall’s views. Prophetic messages on Daniel and Revelation were proclaimed each Sunday in the Képpental-Orloff Church. So intense was Hamm’s campaign that even Senior Epp had to join the rest of the community in studies of millennial prophecies.** The elder Epp had four sons; Claas, Jr., born on September 9, 1838, was the oldest. Even as a boy, he avidly read and quoted Jung-Stilling’s Heimweh, which had by this time become a second The Emergence of Chiliasm Claas Epp, Jr., age 38, and his wife, Elizabeth (nee Jantzen), with their daughter Margareth in 1876. Mrs. Epp is pregnant with Bernhard. 60 The Great Trek of the Russian Mennonites Bible to the chiliasts of Russia. Like his father, Claas, Jr., had a pronounced gift for leadership and was an attractive personality, al- though he occasionally exhibited ruthless severity. He was successful in agriculture and apparently owned t