© Mennonite Heritage Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba (Last updated 16 March 2011)
Peter Jacob Braun, outstanding educator among the Russian Mennonites, was born 9 February 1880 in Alexanderwohl, Ukraine, and died 24 September 1933 at Oberursel, Taunus, Germany. He was married to Maria Friesen. He graduated from the Zentralschule and the Teacher's Training School, both at Halbstadt, Molotschna, South Russia. After teaching several years, he enrolled at the St. Petersburg Teacher's Institute for further training. Following his graduation he taught at the Halbstadt Zentralschule, and from 1909 to 1914 at the girls' school, also in Halbstadt. After the war he served as principal of the Teacher's Training School at Halbstadt. In 1924 he left Russia for Germany where he died a premature death of tuberculosis.
In June 1917, at its first meeting after the collapse of the Russian monarchy, the General Conference of all Russian Mennonite Churches endorsed Peter Braun's proposal for the establishment of a central archive for the Mennonite community in which he would collect, cull and organize the existing historical materials that could be found. The materials which he collected were eventually concealed, then seized by the Soviet authorities, and transferred to the Odessa Regional Archives, where they were discovered by western scholars in 1990.
The Peter J. Braun Mennonite Archive collection is large and varied. It includes a selection of documents of the Halbstadt District from the period 1803-1820, the archive of the Agricultural Society [in Molotschna] since 1831, the papers of Johann Cornies (1789-1848), Moloschna Mennonite School records, records regarding the forestry service after 1880, and much more. One significant document included in this collection is a complete census of the Molotschna colony taken in 1835. (Index available at: www.mennonitegenealogy.com/russia/1835cein.htm)
See the published guide for this collection: Ingrid I. Epp and Harvey L. Dyck, The Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archives, 1803-1920: a research guide (Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 1996). A copy is on the Mennonite Heritage Centre Reference Shelf.
Manuscript Collection 091, Peter J. Braun, Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel College, Newton, Kansas.
German and Russian
Odessa Regional Archives, Odessa, Ukraine
none to access
Harvey Dyck, University of Toronto Research Program in Russian Mennonite Studies
Acc. No. 93-035