The Only Mennonite Heimat

• Arnold Dyck once proposed that Plautdietsch was the only real Heimat - the only true earthly home - that the Russian Mennonites have ever had:

• • Plautdietsch served as a common bond between Russian Mennonites, extending beyond barriers of country and denomination, a sign of shared heritage and belonging
  • Facing persecution and political pressures, exile and emigration, the chaos of revolution and the hardships of homesteading, Plautdietsch was a vital part of sustained community - a store of shared experience which could be picked up and transplanted, as often as needed, to the Russian steppes or the Siberian tundra, to the Canadian prairies or the Paraguayan Chaco

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