We Came Home
As Mennonite Germans from Russia, Wilhelm Berg and his family made the challenging and life-changing choice to start a new life in Germany. They have lots of company.
About 2.5 million ethnic Germans, including 200,000 with Mennonite, Plautdietsch-speaking roots, have relocated there. They've taken advantage of Germany's constitutional policy that allowed ethnic Germans to flood into this new homeland. The immigration spiked at 200,000 annually during the '90s, before restrictions were tightened to stem the huge influx.
From Kazakhstan to Germany
Berg left Kazakhstan, the former Soviet republic in Central Asia, for Germany in 1988. He came with his wife Helen and four children. They brought nothing but four suitcases.
Berg left ultimately for economic reasons, though he himself was included in the tiny segment of the population who were well off. Some of Berg's relatives were against his family leaving for Germany, calling him a fascist. Ironically, many of those same people didn't want to be left behind and now are also living in Germany.
"I don't regret coming here," Berg says of his family's new life. "My children have a future here."
But why choose Germany?
"We came home."
The newcomers have not always found Germany to be "home." Many were viewed as Germans in Russia; now, many feel like they are being viewed as Russians in Germany.
The Complications of Language
“The language problem is probably the biggest issue in the beginning," explains Peter Wiens, part-time director of the Plautdietsch Friends Society, a non-profit organization that fosters and promotes the Mennonite mother tongue, "because language is key to all the other resources here in Germany."
Wiens says most of the Mennonites who arrived in the 1970s, largely because of religious reasons, were very competent in High German, though they had added some of their own unique twists and accents to the language. Those who came in the '90s were different, however; they spoke Russian and Plautdietsch.
"Maybe more than half of them didn't know any High German, or just a few words, so they needed to learn German from zero."
In the Berg family's case, the family spoke Plautdietsch when they arrived from Russia. However, the children were getting mixed up trying to juggle their mother tongue and some Russian, with the High German all around them. Though Berg would have been happy to stick with Plautdietsch, he says all of the family has focused on using High German. They realize it is the standard in their new homeland.
High German may be the official language in Germany, but Plautdietsch is still important for many of its relocated speakers. So is the translation of the Plautdietsch Scriptures, which involved Wycliffe personnel.
Plautdietsch Scripture in Use
Sawatzki heads production of the regular Plautdietsch Radio program in the region. While most of the audience is 50 years of age and older, he has heard of groups of 20 young people gathering in parking lots, opening their car doors to listen to the Plautdietsch radio show through their auto stereo systems. The Christian program includes Scripture reading from the Plautdietsch ("Low German") Bible.
"It just makes sense that if you talk about God that you read the Bible in that same language," explains Sawatzki. "We don't want to go back the way it used to be—that we read the Bible in High German, and then we talk about it in Low German and then go back again to read it in High German. It's more natural to read in Low German."
In the end, surely this is the important thing: whether you are a Mennonite in Russia, Germany, Canada or Bolivia, it is crucial to understand who God is and how much He personally wants to relate—to all of us.
Adapted from a longer article by Dwayne Janke, Word Alive magazine, Wycliffe Canada