Johann Funk, Ältester of the Bergthaler Mennoniten Gemeinde of Manitoba (1882-1911)

By Lawrence Klippenstein

Johann Funk was born in Niederchortitza, Chortitza settlement on 26 December 1836. His parents were Margaretha Braeul (1806-1861) and Peter Funk(1799-1884 ). Johann was born the year of the founding of the Bergthal Colony in New Russia. The family moved there soon after¹.

The future Ältester Johann Funk will have had his early schooling in the Bergthal settlement (possibly in Heuboden)². He was baptized in the church in the Bergthal village. He married Margaretha Braun (1839-1861), youngest daughter of Susanna Leiki (1796-1864) and Ältester Jakob Braun (1791-1868). Margaretha and Johann had one daughter, Susanna, before Margaretha died. Johann remarried to Susanna Rempel (1842-1879 ) on 28 October1861. Johann and Susanna had fourteen children of whom nine died in infancy.

The Johann Funk family moved to Manitoba from Bergthal Colony in 1875. They settled on the East Reserve village of Bergthal. In 1877 Johann Funk was ordained as a minister of the Bergthal group by Ältester Gerhard Wiebe, who had also moved to Manitoba with his family in 1875. Johann's wife, Susanna, died in childbirth on 2 December 1879. Johann remarried, to his third wife, Elisabeth (Louise ?) Dyck (1855-1926), daughter of Elisabeth Ens (1820-1883) and Johann Dyck (1821-1908), later of Altbergthal³.

In 1881 Elisabeth and Johann Funk moved to the West Reserve where they were a founding family of the Bergthal village (later Altbergthal). In 1882 he was ordained as Ältester. Over 300 Bergthal families had moved from the East Reserve to the West Reserve by 1882⁴. Other church leaders assisting Funk were Heinrich Wiebe, Edenburg; Abraham Bergen, Schönthal; Isaac Giesbrecht, Neuhoffnung; and Abraham Schroeder, Altbergthal⁵.

Besides the Bergthaler church group, the other main church group on the West Reserve was the Reinländer Mennoniten Gemeinde. It was organized in 1880 by Ältester Johann Wiebe (see HP, No.28). The Bergthaler on the East Reserve came to be known as the Chortitzer Mennonitengemeinde under the leadership of Ältester Gerhard Wiebe and after 1882, of Ältester David Stoesz⁶.

Ältester Funk gave leadership to the West Reserve Bergthaler Gemeinde from 1882-1911. The first ten years were spent in organizing congregations and tending to special pioneering concerns. Such were mission work, education, and tensions with Reinländer members.

The first crisis for Ältester Funk concerned his support of the Gretna Normalschule which opened in 1889. His support for the school and its leader, Heinrich Ewert, caused a split in theBergthaler group in 1892. The dissenting group elected Abraham Doerksen from Sommerfeld as their Ältester. The remaining "Funksche Gemeinde" had about sixty families who supported Funk's emphasis on mission work, and other renewal efforts⁷. Leadership came also from ministers, Heinrich Ewert, Benjamin Ewert, Jakob Hoeppner, and Franz Sawatzky.

The final period of Funk's activity, 1903-1911, began with another education crisis. Should the school at Gretna be enlarged? Should the school be relocated to Altona? In the end the school was rebuilt in both places. Heinrich Ewert headed the new MCI at Gretna from 1908 on. Funk supported the Altona option whereas others in the Bergthal leadership group favoured the Gretna option. This tension in the end was a factor in Funk's retirement in 1911. He was replaced by Ältester Jakob Hoeppner⁸.

The West Reserve Bergthaler made specific moves around 1900 to form a conference with the Saskatchewan Rosenorter Mennonites. The first sessions of their representatives took place in 1903. The main Bergthaler leadership came again from the ministers Heinrich and Benjamin Ewert and Jakob Hoeppner. Funk had a lesser role in this initiative, but remained involved in the work of the church as a whole⁹.

Ältester Funk passed away on 17 March 1917. The Lehrdienst of the Bergthalers with Johann Funk at the helm had worked with courage, if not always with total tact and local sensitivities, to lay a foundation on which a new church body could carry on effectively. It would be more than fifty years before further major changes would take place in the Bergthaler brotherhood¹⁰. Even then the membership would look back and agree that basically their early leaders, certainly including Funk, had laid firm foundations, and those following them had served them well.

Endnotes

1. Mary Dueck Jeffery. Ältester Johann Funk: A Family Tree (Winnipeg, MB, by the author, 1980), 15. This work also includes an essay by Esther Epp titled, "Ältester Johann Funk: His Life and Work", 1-8. See also John Dyck, ed. Bergthal Gemeinde Buch (Steinbach, MB: Hanover Steinbach Historical Society, 1993), 48, entry A102. See also Lawrence Klippenstein, "Funk, Johann", Dictionary of Canadian Biography 1911-1920 (Toronto Buffalo London: University of Toronto Press,1998), Vol. XIV, 379.

2. On Bergthal beginnings see William Schroeder. The Bergthal Colony. Revised Edition (Winnipeg, MB: CMBC Publications, 1986), 17ff.

3. MHCA, Vol. 718, Bergthal Church Register No.1, 22, and Dyck, Gemeinde Buch, 104, entry B6 and 282.

4. MHCA, Vol. 3720, file 3 "Altbergthal Notes", and John Rempel and William Harms, eds. Atlas of original Mennonite Villages Homesteaders and Some Burial Plots of the Mennonite West Reserve (Altona, MB: by the authors, 1990), 30, 39, and 41. See also Jeffery, 9 - 12.

5. On Johann Funk's ministry among Bergthalers of the West Reserve see Henry J .Gerbrandt. Adventure in Faith: The Background in Europe and the Development In Canada of the Bergthaler Mennonite Church of Manitoba (Altona, MB: The Bergthaler Mennonite Church of Manitoba, 1970), 83ff. Peter D. Zacharias. Reinland: An Experience in Community (Reinland, MB: The Reinland Centennial Committee, 1976), 207.

6. For several important aspects of the Chortitzer Mennonite Church story see Dennis Stoesz, "A History of the Chortltzer Mennonite Church of Manitoba 1874 - 1914", unpublished MA thesis, University of Manitoba, 1987.

7. See Gerbrandt, Adventure, 93 and Zacharias, Reinland, 207. A study of the various backgrounds of people who remained in the Bergthaler group is in Sandra Bergen, "The Bergthal Church in Southern Manitoba: Statistical Analysis of Names of Origin and Settlement", unpublished CMBC paper in the MHCA alphabetical vertical file.

8. On Hoeppner's leadership see Joy Poettcker, "Hoeppner Genealogy", unpublished CMBC paper in MHCA author alphabetical vertical files in the section "Jakob Hoeppner in Michaelsburg 1875" (the memoirs of Jakob Hoeppner), 26 - 27 and Gerbrandt, Adventure, 105, 115 - 117.

9. Gerbrandt, Adventure, 91.

10. The moves to make local Bergthaler congregations more independent, and to merge with the Conference of Mennonites in Canada created a new chapter for the story of the Bergthaler people in Manitoba. Cf. Gerbrandt, Adventure, 330ff, and his Postscript to Adventure in Faith (Winnipeg, MB: CMBC Publications, 1986), and Elizabeth Bergen, "Bergthaler Churches Close Historic Era", Red River Valley Echo, June 14, 1972, 2.