T he Constructed Mennonite: History, Memory and the Second World War is the biography of a man called Hans, written by his son, Hans. It is this simple fact that makes it a gripping book. The son (hereafter referred to as Werner) is a historian whose explicit aims are made clear in paragraphs about memory at the end of each chapter. That these paragraphs are inadequate is partly because of the urgency of an implicit personal goal that takes precedence: the son’s effort to come to terms with how his father came to terms with the past. The plain speaking that has historically led Mennonites to resist fiction is visible here in the almost painful honesty with which Werner records facts even when they contradict his father’s stories. Like Jacob wrestling with an angel, the son who wrestles with his father’s ghost seems to say: “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me” (Genesis 32:26). The Constructed Mennonite is a...
Magdalene Redekop is a professor emerita in the Department of English at the University of Toronto and the author of numerous articles on Mennonite culture. She is writing a book entitled Making Believe: Mennonites and the Crisis of Representation.
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