Ponten, Josef (1883–1940)
Servantius Josef Ponten: German writer and traveler; born on 3 July 1883 in Raeren bei Eupen, Belgium. Josef’s wife was Julia Baroness von Broich (9 September 1880, Schönau, Belgium - 18 July 1947, Munich, Germany), a painter. Ponten died on 3 April 1940 in Munich, Germany.
Josef Ponten was a prolific German writer and traveller who is still known in Europe but almost unknown in the English speaking world. He studied art history at several universities and traveled the world including Egypt, Iceland, the Soviet Union, the Americas, Morocco, and the Balkans. His keen observations coupled with his descriptive powers enabled him to produce landscape writing which is both evocative and accurate. In addition to nonfiction Ponten was also ambitious in writing fiction -- mostly historical novels.
Towards the end of his career Ponten began a monumental task of portraying German settlements in Russia and in other foreign lands in a grand cycle of novels titled: Volk auf dem Weg, Roman der deutschen Unruhe (A People on the Way: a novel of German Restlessness). This cycle of novels was incomplete at his death but six volumes were published in the years 1934-1942. These six focused mostly on Germans in Russia. In these novels Ponten occasionally refers to the Mennonites of Russia.
Though of a Catholic background Ponten withdrew from that church and generally in his writings ignored religion and focused primarily on ethnic and racial features of the people. However, Ponten, to further his novels, found occasion to characterize the religious affiliation of some characters and when he did this the character was embellished with a name, virtues and specific attributes.
Ponten visited German settlements in Russia in 1925 but did not visit any Mennonite settlements in Ukraine though he may have visited them in the Volga-German Republic. He no doubt got information on them from the Russian-Germans he visited. When J. Wilhelm Dyck studied Ponten’s novels he found that the author had used information from earlier published sources including C. Henry Smith’s The Story of the Mennonites, and writings about the Claas Epp trek to Central Asia.
Russian Mennonites are described as possessing well established estates, and of being efficient and industrious yet often ignorant of contemporary issues. Further their spiritual life was visualized in good deeds and in maintenance of moral standards. Ponten’s other information sources on Mennonites were from his visit to the United States in 1928-29 and to Paraguay in 1936. It may be that the pacifist theology of Mennonites may have resonated with his own pacifist principles. The Ponten Archives in Düsseldorf, Germany, indicates that the author collected extensive information on Mennonites. Unfortunately Ponten never finished the American part of his cycle of novels so we do not know how he may have used this added information in depicting American Mennonites.
Bibliography
Dyck, J. Wilhelm. "The Problems of the Russo-Germans in the Later Works of Josef Ponten." Ph. D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1956. 243 pp.
Dyck, J. Wilhelm. "Mennonites in Josef Ponten’s Novels." Mennonite Life Vol.XII, no.3 (July 1957): 135-137.
Wikipedia. "Josef Ponten." 26 January 2015. Web. 20 February 2015. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Ponten.
Selected List of Works
Band 1: Wolga Wolga: Roman. (Volga Volga: Novel). Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1930. Revised as Im Wolgaland, Roman. Stuttgart, Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1933. This novel is set around the year 1910.
Band 2: Rhein und Wolga. (Rhine and the Volga). Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1931. Revised as Die Väter zogen aus. Roman (The Fathers Went Out. Novel). Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1934. This is set in the earliest time, covering the period 1689-1808 and ranging from America to the Volga.
Band 3: Rheinisches Zwischenspiel. Roman (Rhenish Interlude. Novel). Stuttgart, Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1937. Recounts the return to Germany of one of the families.
Band 4: Die Heiligen der letzten Tage. Roman (The Saints of the Last Days). Stuttgart, Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1938. Set in the 1820s, partly in Germany and partly in eastern Hungary.
Band 5: Der Zug nach dem Kaukasus. Roman (The Train to the Caucasus. Novel). Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1940. Written as a sequel to Die Heiligen der letzten Tage.
Band 6: Der Sprung ins Abenteuer. (The Leap into Adventure). Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1942. The location for this novel moves from Russia to Morocco in 1913.
| Author(s) | Victor G Wiebe |
|---|---|
| Date Published | January 2015 |
Cite This Article
MLA style
Wiebe, Victor G. "Ponten, Josef (1883–1940)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. January 2015. Web. 22 Nov 2024. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Ponten,_Josef_(1883%E2%80%931940)&oldid=130698.
APA style
Wiebe, Victor G. (January 2015). Ponten, Josef (1883–1940). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 22 November 2024, from https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Ponten,_Josef_(1883%E2%80%931940)&oldid=130698.
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