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The Constructed Mennonite

History, Memory, and the Second World War

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The Constructed Mennonite

Written by: Hans Werner
Narrated by: Ian Peters
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About this listen

John Werner was a storyteller. A Mennonite immigrant in southern Manitoba, he captivated his audiences with tales of adventure and perseverance. With every telling he constructed and reconstructed the memories of his life.

John Werner was a survivor. Born in the Soviet Union just after the Bolshevik Revolution, he was named Hans and grew up in a German-speaking Mennonite community in Siberia. As a young man in Stalinist Russia, he became Ivan and fought as a Red Army soldier in the Second World War. Captured by Germans, he was resettled in occupied Poland where he became Johann, was naturalized and drafted into Hitler’s German army where he served until captured and placed in an American POW camp. He was eventually released and then immigrated to Canada where he became John.

The Constructed Mennonite is a unique account of a life shaped by Stalinism, Nazism, migration, famine, and war. It investigates the tenuous spaces where individual experiences inform and become public history; it studies the ways in which memory shapes identity, and reveals how context and audience shape autobiographical narratives.

©2013 Hans Werner (P)2020 University of Manitoba Press Christianity Social Sciences Wars & Conflicts Military War Refugee
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What the critics say

“A significant contribution particularly to the canon of life-stories of Mennonites (and other Soviet Germans) who lived through the tragic years of Stalinist repression and the Second World War. Werner’s struggle with his ethnic identity as illuminated in the numerous name changes he experienced in his lifetime provides important and rare insight into issues of belonging and identity.” (Marlene Epp, University of Waterloo)

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Could have been so much better

Due to a familial link, I was quite excited to listen to this book; yet, I found it difficult to listen to and enjoy the book as intended. The book had great potential, but it was written and read more like an essay than a novel. The narrator did not appear to have invested much emotion while reading the book. In addition, the narrator informed the audience when something was enclosed in parentheses or quotation marks and mentioned the information below images. The addition of that material added no value to the book. I don't believe I would have listened to the full book if it were not for the familial link.

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