Waves of Plautdietsch

Use of Plautdietsch—and the Scriptures in that language—get a boost from radio broadcasts among tens of thousands of resettled Mennonites from Russia.

Viktor Sawatzki was in a quandary. As a relatively new Christian in Germany (since 1999), the 40-year-old electrician wanted to serve God.

"I looked at myself, and said, 'I can't do anything; I can't preach, I can't sing, I can't play an instrument.' I didn't want to sit in the back row of church and just look on passively. So I prayed to God, asking, 'How can I serve you?'"

Sawatzki heard about Christian radio broadcasting from HCJB Radio in Ecuador to the many other Plautdietsch-speaking immigrants in central Germany like him. He had resettled in 1990 from one of two dozen villages in Russia's Ural Mountains where Plautdietsch dominated. Sawatzki decided to get involved by helping promote the radio ministry; the match seemed perfect.

Then, two years ago, an opportunity arose to produce Plautdietsch programming for broadcasting at no cost on Radio Lippe, part of the North Rhein-Westphalia provincial public radio network. Viktor wondered if he could head up a team to produce the show every other week.

Nearby church leaders told the husband and father of three that Plautdietsch was dying out, that programming really wasn't needed. He was deeply discouraged.

But today, an enthusiastic Sawatzki leads the Plautdietsch Radio team, working an average of a few hours daily in his sound-insulated basement studio in front of a computer. He records and/or edits together the content that is collected for each 52-minute program, including reading from the new Plautdietsch Bible.

Confirmation by Phone
Why the turnabout? In the face of the discouraging comments from others, Viktor decided to privately pray about the matter for seven days. What should he do? Should he walk away from helping the radio production, even though he felt drawn to it?

God answered him loud and clear on the final day. Shortly before going to bed that night, the telephone rang.

"It was an old man. I didn't know him," recalls Viktor, speaking through an interpreter. "He had only heard that there was Low German [Plautdietsch] on the radio, and he wanted to know more. So I explained to him how he could receive it—and I asked him whether or not he considered the work to be worthwhile to continue or not."

The man was quiet for a long time. Sawatzki thought the caller didn't understand the question. But the man was crying.

The caller told Viktor that when he still lived in Russia, there was no church or service nearby. One day he came to a group of people without a preacher, but they were listening to a Christian broadcast from Ecuador in Plautdietsch.

Recalls Sawatzki, "He said, 'I became a Christian because of a radio station broadcasting. And you ask me if what you are wanting to do is worthwhile?'"

Plautdietsch Radio on Air
The Plautdietsch radio program has been on the air for about a year, broadcasting to a cluster of communities around Detmold, southwest of Hannover, an area inhabited by tens of thousands of Mennonites who have migrated here in the past few decades, mostly from Russia. When the program hasn't aired due to the team's personal schedules, their phones have rung off the hook from listeners asking why.

"They are excited that it exists," Sawatzki says of the audience. "They have . . . longed for it—and now it's here."

Sawatzki says while most of the audience is 50 years of age and older, he has heard of groups of 20 young people gathering in parking lots, opening their car doors to listen to the Plautdietsch radio show on their auto stereo systems.

The program features such items as children's stories, songs, testimonies—and Scripture reading from the Plautdietsch Bible on a topic related to the program's theme.

Sawatzki is happy to have the Scriptures in his mother tongue and is certain that many in the audience are too.

"It just makes sense if you talk about God that you read the Bible in that same language," explains Sawatzski. "We don't want to go back to the way it used to be—that we read the Bible in High German, and then we talk about it in Low German and then go back again to read it in High German. It's more natural to read in Low German."

Sawatzki doesn't accept the idea, held by some that spoke to Word Alive in Germany, that the resettled Mennonites can completely understand the High German used in their new churches, thereby getting the spiritual food they need.

"These people exist, but they are an exception. People who say they don't need Low German are in the minority," he insists. "But they speak louder and it appears that everybody thinks that way."