William Reimer

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-158510
• Immigration: 1926, , Canada

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-158498

Notes:

Gerhard and Gertrude Reimer

Rev. Gerhard Reimer moved his family, including the youngest six of his seven children from the urban core of Winnipeg to the farming community of Leamington in the summer of 1930, when he was 53 years old. When he was not yet 55, he was dead, having suffered a fatal heart attack. But in just over a year in Leamington - as earlier elsewhere - he proved himself a friendly and compassionate minister interested in the well-being of the Mennonite Brethren and General Conference Mennonites alike, someone who ministered to both groups willingly, whether at joint or at separate services. In 1930-31 as earlier, he sought to prove himself worthy of his calling; and he dreamed and strove to improve himself financially, so that he might preach independent of material needs. As it happened, thoughout his life the times in which he lived were either notably in his favour or just as notably against him with regard to his financial ambitions; and material security and the question of economic well-being inevitably seemed to determine the scope and nature of his ministry.

Gerhard Reimer was born November 27, 1876 to Wilhelm and Helena, nee Klassen Reimer, reasonably well-to-do farmers firmly established in Alexanderkrone, one of the nearly sixty Mennonite villages in the large Molotschna colony in Ukraine. Mennonites were enjoying a progressive period of vigorous economic and cultural blossoming of their society in Russia, and Gerhard, the youngest of the four boys in the family, breathed the lively air of those heady years. By the time he was at the high-school ( probably in Ohrloff, in the 1890's he watched in admiration as his oldest brother, Jakob (1860-1948), sixteen years his senior, developed a widespread reputation as an eminent evangelist and travelling preacher among Mennonites in Russia (with invitations to preach even in the United States in the late 1890s), with assignments among village churches and estate retreats alike. He determined to pursue a similar career of teaching and preaching, whether also as a travelling preacher (Reiseprediger) sustained by wealthy sponsors or, as he later came to prefer, as a more regionally-based minister supported by his own private means.


First, however, he knew he would need serious training, and so around the turn of the century he spent three years in Germany; two years in formal theological studies at the Baptist Seminary based in Hamburg, then further Biblical studies for one year in Berlin.

And then he fell in love. It was while he was visiting at the beautiful estate of the Peter Schmidts (at Steinbach, on the southern rim of the Molotschna colony) that he first saw and later proposed to Gertrude Wiebe, a nineteen-year-old girl from Fischau who held a position as seamstress at the Schmidts (and who had become a Christian there, on the occasion of the services there of Jakob Reimer, Gerhard's increasingly well-known oldest brother). Gerhard and Gertrude were married on October 5, 1904 (blissfully unaware, of course, that they would someday mark their 25th wedding anniversary in Winnipeg, Canada).

Gerhard took his bride first to Alexanderkrone, where they lived with his parents from 1904 to 1906, while he explored ways of developing his vocation as preacher. In fact, he was often not with her those two years, for he was travelling a good deal as an evangelist, whether in northern (Samara, Orenburg, Memrik) or southern (Crimea) parts of Russia. Wealthy, philanthropic Mennonites - accustomed to supporting Mennonite religious, educational, and cultural practices - proposed, in those years, to sponsor Gerhard's rather successful travelling ministry on a permanent basis, but he increasingly preferred to pursue more personal means of supporting his calling, not least because he wanted to establish a family of his own within which he might daily play his part. Children (as his wife assured him by 1906) were in the offing.

What he and his wife decided to do in 1906 was to move far north and east, well over 1,000 miles away, to Ufa, one of the many "daughter" colonies the industrious Mennonites had busily been establishing throughout Russia. The Ufa district lay in sight of the southern Ural Mountains, and was a four - or five - day train journey from the Molotschna colony. In the Ufa region, where large tracts of land had become cheaply available, Mennonites from the Molotschna colony and elsewhere had for twelve or fifteen years rapidly developed the enormous agricultural and other business opportunities; they had established a thriving agricultural, industrial, and entrepreneurial presence centred in the Russian city of Dawlekanowo that lay along the Trans-Siberian Railway but spread also in some 19 villages and a fair number of large estates round about. Growing in number to two or three thousand, the Mennonites developed also a significant cultural - especially educational and musical - identity in the Ufa area. So, with some money left over from what his parents had earlier bequeathed to him (and what he had not already spent during his years of formal study), Gerhard Reimer and his young wife Gertrude moved to one of the six Jelanskaya villages in the Ufa region, developed on land acquired with the help of Mennonite land agent Johann Giesbrecht from Russian aristocracy. Here they built their oown house, using logs, as was typical in the north, where timber was in good supply.


The settlers in the Ufa villages and estates, mostly young married couples, some of whom had wealthy parents in the south, others of whom were eager to establish themselves using the resources and opportunities of the north, very much liked Gerhard Reimer's ministry. In Jelanskaya he was ordained as a minister of the Mennonite Brethren, but he made his mark serving Mennonite Brethren and General Conference (not to mention the bridge-mending A llia n z) Mennonites alike in the Ufa congregation, from 1906 to 1921. Building on his earlier studies, he expanded his reading in these years too, and built up a private theological library of which he could be proud. But, ever looking for a yet better world in which he might someday raise and educate his children, he talked sometimes of moving again, perhaps even to the golden world of California.

On their own piece of land in Jelanskaya the Reimers harvested some fine crops: rye and oats, vegetables and potatoes. They drew extensively on help from workers belonging to the surrounding Tatar (Mohammedan) neighbourhoods. Unlike the south (and unlike Leamington), Jelanskaya did not support tomatoes, for they could not ripen fast enough in an area known for eight months of heavy snow and long cold nights, where for two-thirds of the year visits to neighbours meant travelling beneath layers of furs in horse-drawn sleighs along narrow, snowed-in roads. But the district did support rabbits, and Gerhard's brother Wilhelm (his one brother who was neither to marry or become a minister), who lived alone but nearby, would pop over so often with a rabbit he had bagged that his sister-in-law Gertrude finally said enough was enough: she was tired of rabbit stew and, even more, tired of taking charge of having the endless succession of rabbits skinned and prepared.

By 1912 Gerhard declared he was ready to seize a new opportunity, however risky it may also by then have seemed. As so many Mennonites had already done over the preceding half century, he looked at some other land which had long been held by Russian aristocracy, and which, typically, was of decreasing interest and value to the old upper classes in the current capitalist environment. So in 1912 the Gerhard Reimers joined two yet-more-prosperous families (the Kornelius Baergs and the Johann Neumans) in acquiring a large and still quite elegant estate: Kusnezowa. The Baergs were the main shareholders, and moved into the largest mansion on Kusnezowa, where they entertained on elegant cane furniture in the grand dining room. The Reimers moved into what had been the estate manager's family residence and, drawing partly on financial support from wealthy sponsors in the south who remained keen on furthering Gerhard's influence as minister, acquired for themselves about 600 acres of the Kusnezowa estate. There, with a private teacher (Johann P. Warkentin, who was to be conscripted when World War 1 broke out two years later) for the children of the three families (the Reimers' first five children, all girls, were bom from 1906 to 1917), and Russian, Polish, Austrian, and German house servants and farm labourers, they flourished for five years. There, Gerhard Reimer, always good with horses, would be out in the fields in the summer at 4: 00 a.m., the first of all the workers, eager to put in the hard work that he hoped would solidify his financial amibitions and support his ministry.


But in 1917 the times changed, and from then until 1921 in the north, and from 1921 to 1924 in the south, the Reimer family experienced seven years of incredible turbulence and hardship. In 1917, when he was 41, Gerhard Reimer and his family fled (with only a servant or two, a horse and one or two cows, a sum of money from what they'd been able to sell) from their now obviously isolated estate (which surrounding neighbours openly began to eye greedily) to the six interconnected Jelanskaya villages where friends (the Peter Goosens in their large house from 1917 to 1921, the Peter Mieraus until a fire in 1921, and briefly, the Gerhard Martens family) offered them places to rent. When a disaffected servant at the Mieraus set fire to the Mierau house one night (May 1, 1921), the Mieraus and the Reimers barely escaped with their lives. With Gertrude, who was still in bed with her sixth child - a boy less than a week old - and all the others safely outside, Gerhard desperately pitched his theological books through the window also to safety.

By 1921 Gerhard and Gertrude Reimer - uneasy in their seemingly unending reliance on the good will and incredible generosity of their friends in Jelankaya, and with no money or possessions left - decided to retrace their steps yet further: to their original homeland, the Molotschna colony (where the period of great pillaging by bands of anarchists had largely ended). The usual four - or five - day trip now was a four week ordeal. Farewells waved from the deck of the boat - to Jelanskaya friends mourning the departure of their beloved minister of the past fifteen years, and his family - merged for the Reimers with slow progress along the Belaja, Kama, and Volga rivers, past glistening white villas now standing abandoned along the forested banks; and this merged with a desperate week-long period of waiting and confusion inside and outside the large train station at what was in later years for a time called Stalingrad. Here the Reimers, the only Mennonites, watched as a death-cart, drawn by camels, moved in and out through the starving and increasingly cholera-ridden crowds that had been gathering at the station, seeking refuge and a trip further south (unaware that famine conditions were about to take effect there too). The massive travelling-trunks that Gertrude had carefully stuffed with food -G e rö ste te Z w ieback, Schinkenfleisch, K ä se - finally were helpful in letting Gerhard stir the officials into giving at least his family passage on a train made up of a series of open flat cars without so much as a railing on them. But before the train got back to Ukraine, Gerhard and other men would have to get out and push it up any difficult grade.

In the Molotschna village of Rückenau, Gerhard's second oldest brother, Heinrich, was minister of the Mennonite Brethren church; he and his wife Liese, though taken aback by the sudden arrival of this large family from the north, gave the Gerhard Reimers a small, sparsely-outfitted workers' dwelling (Nebn H a u s) on their yard. Here the Gerhard Reimers struggled to survive Gerhard's bout with dysentry in 1921 and the great famine of 1921-24. They again relied on much help - especially food - from friends, and also from the "American Kitchens" provided by relief agencies such as the MCC. In 1921-1924, Gerhard Reimer himself managed to make small exchanges for food, sometimes by selling off a few of his beloved books, sometimes by preaching in various of the churches in nearby villages.

Not a moment too soon, in the summer of 1924, when socio-economic times in general had at least temporarily improved in Russia, a big break came: Gerhard Reimer was invited to be leader in the Tiege Mennonite Brethren Church in the twin communities of Tiege-Ohrloff in the Molotschna colony. Here he thrived in the presence of this lively and influential congregation, with its fine choir, and with invitations to speak also to the prominent Ohrloff (General Conference) congregation nearby. His two oldest children, now 18 and 15, were baptized at Tiege, and attended the superb Mennonite high-school at Ohrloff. And at Tiege, when he was 48 and Gertrude was 39, his seventh and last child - his second son - was bom.

Although Gertrude would love to have stayed in Tiege-Ohrloff, with its plethora of cultural activities, Gerhard in 1926 insisted that - for all the appearance, then, of a better world - the new communist regime could not in the long run provide them with the opportunities he craved for his family, and they should yet again go through a painful leavetaking with many dear friends. So, amidst excruciatingly disorienting passport troubles, amidst delays that left the family (at first without their father) stranded in Moscow, amidst intense and anguished cries of prayer and telegraphed messages, the entire family made another great trek: from Lichtenau train station in Molotschna (October 28, 1926), to Moscow, to Lithuania (November 10, 1926), to London, to Southhampton, to Liverpool (on a train journey that had Gerhard look longingly at the lush green world that seemed so peaceful outside) to Saint John (on the CPR ship, the Montroyal).


On the trans-Atlantic sea voyage, as on voyage after voyage by other groups of Mennonites that decade, the Reimers and their co-religionists would appear on one of the decks on the Sundays, young people presenting as if by magic the performances of an accomplished choir. The travellers on the Montroyal listened on the two Sundays to sermons by Gerhard Reimer, and the children attended Sunday School classes instantaneously created by teachers they may never before have seen. And Mennonites of all ages would get together any day of the week to sing German folk songs on board the ship. Their finely-honed institutional life and deeply-ingrained customs which had taken Mennonites - like the Reimers - through various worlds in Russia, now sustained them, like 20,000 other Mennonites who came in the 1920s to Canada, on board a CPR ship, and would sustain and carry many of them in years to come in Canada.


In Saint John, some hastily rejigged plans now took the Gerhard Reimer family to the huge CPR station in Winnipeg instead of the long-anticipated Kitchener (thus effecting a reverse of the sequence of Canadian homes for older brother Jakob and his family, who started in 1924-28 in Kitchener and in the 1930s became extremely well-known in Manitoba as Offenbarung Reimer). In Winnipeg, the Reimers' three older daughters scattered into well-to-do "English" homes and learned plenty there about upper-middleclass "Canadian" life (while of course helping to tackle the very problem that their father Gerhard found so vexing and oppressive: the huge Reiseschuld, or travel debt, owed to the CPR). Gerhard, who had learned some English during his studies in Germany, meanwhile preached in many churches, Lutheran as well as Mennonite, in Winnipeg and especially in rural Manitoba; he often brought back food (fish from people in the lake district of Winnipeg; cream in big cans from others, from which Gertrude would make butter) in exchange for his service. And in his four Winnipeg years - 1926-1930 - he and his family became close friends with many, including evangelist and city-missionary C. N. Hiebert and his wife, who were Americans.

In 1930, with the prospect of better and more diverse labour opportunities very much on his mind (the thought not only of factories and the households of the "English", but also of bountiful farms where even his youngest children might readily find work in the summer months), and the intention to further his ministry in Ontario, Rev. Gerhard Reimer took is family to Leamington (where his new son-in-law, Henry Thielman - later also an ordained Mennonite Brethren minister - had settled with the Reimer's oldest daughter, Lydia, following their marriage in Winnipeg in 1929, on what happened to be the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Gerhard and Gertrude's wedding). In Leamington Gerhard worked on farms, ever anxious about the Reiseschuld (which represented, for example, $200 for one grown child, alone), and preached among the Mennonite groups. It was on a Sunday morning, when ministering to a General Conference group meeting in a house in Windsor, that Gerhard Reimer caught a severe cold. Though joyous in entertaining friends in Leamington that afternoon (following a little sightseeing trip to the new Ambassador Bridge), and joining in the singing and guitar playing, he suddenly became very ill. The diagnosis was pneumonia. He died of a heart attack that week, on October 22, 1931.

Gertrude Reimer, his widow, lived for another 57 years. With the help from wealthy relatives in Kansas she paid off the Reiseschuld in the years right after her husband's death. With the help from the Canadian government, she received a pension -and later shook the hand of the Canadian prime minister to express her thanks for it, and all that Canada offered to her and her family. She moved with her five youngest children to Kitchener in 1940, and for many years was a contributor to the Mennonitische Rundschau. Intellectually lively and stimulating until the end, she died in 1988, just before she turned 103 years old.


grandson P aul Tiessen
Kitchener, Ontario

from writings by
Gertrude Reimer and Lydia Thielman

Biographies OF OUR LATE LEADERS and HistoriesOF THE MENNONITE CHURCHES IN ESSEX AND KENT COUNTIES 1925-1995 co-editors Gisela Schartner and Astrid Koop Published by Essex-Kent Mennonite Historical Association, 1995

Gerhard — Gertrude Wiebe. Gertrude was born 1884, of, Molotschna District, Ukraine; died 1988, Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; was buried , Woodland Cem., Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Name: Gertrude Reimer
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-158499
• Immigration: 1926, , Canada