Reviews
Sprawling canopy spans 400 years The Fehrs: Four centuries of Mennonite migration. By Arlette Kouwenhoven (WINCO Publishing, 2013, 264 pp. $29.95 Cdn.)
F
modern parable of wanderings. For an author new to Mennonites, Kouwenhoven provides a remarkably thorough yet sprightly recasting of the Anabaptist story, stretching her narrative canopy over martyrs, merchants, brandy distillers, farmers, industrialists and pioneers. Along the way she sensitively explores how various segments of the Mennonite diaspora have chosen alternate approaches to tradition and change as they have sought to live out their faith. The story follows the de Veer descendants from Holland to the Danzig area of Prussia where they envisioned a free and secure future. Kouwenhoven’s depiction of this chapter in the Mennonite story is as succinct a narrative as you’re likely to find. While many Mennonites thrived there in business, farming, industry and shipping, they were never fully accepted and were unable to realize the flowering they desired. Thus they were poised to look favorably when Czarina Catherina II made a generous offer to settle the barren Russian steppes. “The Mennonites received more than any other group,” writes Kouwenhoven. “Catharina, herself of Prussian origin, knew as no other what these colonists — in her eyes Prussians like herself — would be able to contribute. They would make the land fruitful and would serve as an example to other immigrant groups.” The Fehrs (DeFehrs) were among those who went to Russia, and in time found themselves swept along by convulsive events in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They became migrants once again, moving to central Canada in 1874 and later, and then to Mexico (1925), Belize and Bolivia. The story swerves dramatically as branches chose different paths with very different outcomes. Unlike their forebears who were invited to Russia to set an example of immigrant progress, the group in Mexico set another kind of standard. “Times have certainly changed,” Kouwenhoven writes. “Once invited by the Mexican president himself,
amily trees can be like their botanical namesakes — you can never be sure how wide their branches will spread and how far their seeds will
scatter. In the case of the Fehrs (or DeFehrs, as one branch of the clan is known) the limbs stretch across Europe to Russia, Manitoba and Mexico. In the deft hands of Arlette Kouwenhoven, a skilled writer and anthropologist, their story becomes a microcosm of the Mennonite journey. Follow one line (the Fehrs) and you end up in the Mexican desert where ultra-conservative descendants of 16th century Dutch grain merchant Gijsbert de Veer (born 1556) chose to “abandon the world and all its vanities” and live in a closed subculture isolated from electricity and cars. Follow another, and you find modern Canadian DeFehrs for whom the Anabaptist impulse readily included the embrace of modernity and active presence in the highest reaches of business and entrepreneurship. Anthropologist Kouwenhoven found the story line fascinating and dove aggressively into the written and human records. She immersed herself in Anabaptist history, scoured archives, pieced together letters and diary fragments, and visited Canada and Mexico to assemble a
Sensitive to immigrants “As Art DeFehr explains, ‘Palliser [Furniture] is a microcosm of our globe. If you stroll through our plant you will hear 40 languages spoken and see 70 nationalities represented.’ He admits, though, that there could also be a degree of calculation involved in hiring so many immigrants because ‘immigrants are by nature a highly motivated group.’ And further, ‘one thing our churches don’t always realize, is that providing employment is one of the most important things we can do in a free-market economy. If you give a refugee a job, they don’t need much other help.’” — The Fehrs: Four centuries of Mennonite migration
The Marketplace January February 2014
18
