Journal of European Baptist Studies, Volume 7, No. 3, 2007

r at this place and the person who had baptized at Alt-Danzig in June, as well as two preachers and two deacons. 22 Ukraine - Ukrainian Believers Revival also spread among the Ukrainian population. Numbers of Ukrainians worked on German farms or in households and were influenced by the German Stunde . 23 Around 1860, because of the ministry of Johann Bonekemper, a Ukrainian stundist group emerged at Ossnova north of Odessa. Other Ukrainian stundists also appeared in the area of Alt-Danzig, about 150 miles north east. Here Ukrainians met in the home of Ephraim Pritzkau, the father of Johann Pritzkau. Besides prayer and singing, Johann interpreted the gospel text in Russian. - In addition, some Mennonite Brethren engaged in personal witness to Ukrainians that led to conversions; ? c some provided Christian literature. - With Ukrainians becoming evangelical believers, it was inevitable that the question of their practicing believer’s baptism would arise. It was no simple matter. The law forbade proselytism of the Orthodox, which, of course, included their baptism as a believer. One who performed such a baptism faced severe penalties - possibly imprisonment, exile to Siberia, or deportation from the country. A few Mennonite Brethren, however, took the bold step of beginning to immerse Ukrainian believers. In 1862 a Ukrainian servant in the home of Heinrich Hubert was immersed. Hubert refused to provide the name of the baptizer and was, for a time, imprisoned and then placed under village arrest. The boldest Mennonite Brethren to immerse was Gerhard Wieler, one who had baptized German believers in Neu-Danzig in 1864, which in turn led to the exile of numbers of them to Turkish jurisdiction. In 1863 and 1864 on two different occasions, Wieler baptized two Ukrainians and, for a time, was imprisoned at Ekaterinoslav. 26 22 For Oncken’s letters of his trip to Russia in English, see Quarterly Reporter , January 1870, pp. 797- 806. 23 For an excellent survey of the beginning and spread of Russian stundism, see Michael Klimenko, Anfange des Baptismus in Siidrussland (Ukraine) nach offiziellen Dokumenten (Doctoral dissertation, Friedrich-Alexander Universitat, Erlangen, 1957). 24 For the influence of the Pritzkaus, father and son, see the Russian critic, A Ya Dorodnitsyn, ‘Nemetskie missionery neobaptizma (Neo-Baptismus) izvestnago pod imenem shtundy na yuge Rossii’, Chteniya v obshchestve lyubiteleidukhovnago prosveshcheniya, 1893, no. 3, pp. 337-47. 23 See John B. Toews, ‘Early Mennonite Brethren and Evangelism in Russia’, Direction 28.2 (Fall, 1999), pp. 187-200, in which he used the 1864 investigative report of Alexander K. Brune produced for the Minister of Internal Affairs. 26 For immersions by Mennonite Brethren, see Toews, ‘Early Mennonite Brethren’, pp. 195-96; Gerhard Wieler, ‘Memorandum’, in Jakob P. Bekker, Origin of The Mennonite Brethren Church (Hillsboro, KS: 44 Journal of European Ba