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.

Hans Werner teaches Canadian History and Mennonite Studies at the University of Winnipeg. His current research includes German and Mennonite migration in the Soviet Union and early Mennonite settlements in western Canada. He is the author of Living Between Worlds: A History of Winkler and The Constructed Mennonite: History, Memory, and the Second World War.

Hans Werner's profile page

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

The title and the cover design suggest that our memories sometimes show a distorted picture, with pieces that don’t quite fit together properly. When the pieces don’t fit, our memories use creative reconstruction. Perhaps all our Mennonite communities are products of such creative reconstructions, and if we look closely we will discover there are flaws we’d rather not see.

Canadian Mennonite

This story of shifting identities and allegiances is intrinsically captivating. It invites readers to consider the rare story of a common soldier who emerged from a community of religious pacifists but ended up serving in not just one but two armies during World War II. As such, the book offers arresting plot lines, twists of fortune, and surprise revelations, and is as gripping and well-told as any historical novel.

Journal of American Ethnic History

Beautifully written and engaging, The Constructed Mennonite offers an unflinching look at how we present ourselves to those around us.

Mennonite World Review

A rich work of history, which will appeal to academics with interests in World War II, transnationalism, migration, and oral history, as well as to others with interests in bringing complex family histories to new life.

Manitoba History

This highly readable monograph reconstructs one man’s life within a turbulent period that required the constant identity shifts echoed in the four names. At the same time, it offers a case study in how events are remembered, reconstructed, and retold to form a coherent, usable past for their authors.

Canadian Slavonic Papers

Those interested in understanding the conflicted responses of Soviet Mennonites to Stalin’s terror and World War II should read The Constructed Mennonite.

Mennonite Historian

This book is a richly textured and layered story of the author’s father. At its basic level, it is a biography—a fascinating story of a man who lived through a remarkable era of European history and lived to tell the stories. Then, Hans Werner reflects on the role his father’s memory played in shaping an reshaping the stories of his past, how memory selected what was included and excluded, how memory adapted to different contexts, and how memory was influenced by gender. In addition, Werner reflects on the importance of both storytelling and memory in the way his father constructed his identity; hence, the title of the book—The Constructed Mennonite.

Journal of Mennonite Studies