Was it possible to be a pacifist and German? During the nineteenth century when militarism and warfare built a German empire in the center of Europe, for the Prussian monarchy the answer to such a question was self-evident. Full citizenship in the nation and with it German identity belonged only to those who served in the army, fought, and if necessary died for the king. But for minority Mennonites this was the question that racked their conscience for a century as they both aspired to citizenship and believed that pacificism was the highest obligation to God. This Mennonite conundrum is the subject of Mark Jantzen's study, one that, despite now the almost exhaustive literature on nationalism and identity, still makes a welcome contribution.

Jantzen's point of departure conceptually is that the nationalization of populations was neither simply dictated from above nor the mere substitution of one identity for another. Rather it was an intense, contested, and ultimately negotiated process, one better understood as a gradual recommitment made in concert with attachments already to religion, family, neighbors, and region. If, as the author contends, previous studies have amounted to sweeping summaries of national identity formation, he proposes instead that national identity is built out of popular material culture. Understanding this process, he argues, requires a more detailed study of the concerns of ordinary people in their lived experience.

The focus is the Mennonite community in the Vistula Delta of Prussia, a community that, Jantzen argues, offers a unique perspective on nationalist dissemination. Here the religious community maintained an autonomous leadership of its own as it challenged military service as the highest creed of nationalism. This shift from a primarily religious identity to loyal citizen-subjects of the nation is of course the common experience of the modern age. The attention to the Mennonite community, however, allows for a careful reconstruction of the under-researched dimension of minority assimilation.

Jantzen's account is chronological, thorough, thick, and highly detailed. Beginning with the acquisition of the Vistula Delta in the late 1700s and additional territory in the second partition of Poland, Prussian authorities began in the name of state building to coerce the Mennonite minority into military service. During the reform period of the early nineteenth century, including efforts to modernize the army following the defeat by Napoleon, Prussian authorities sought leverage with a broad range of discriminatory measures. The state restricted Mennonite property rights, prompted emigration, and imposed additional taxes. The state regulated Mennonite marriages, believing that mixed marriages and the conversion of spouses and their children were a pernicious form of proselytism that merely offered an escape from military service. Mennonites were therefore already being pressured to conform to the nation well before economic modernization.

In exchange for military service, Mennonites were granted the right to own property, gain citizenship status, and not have to swear an oath to the king. But the enduring discriminatory legislations embittered Mennonites, slowed their integration into Prussian society, and encouraged emigration. Meanwhile from the wars of liberation and throughout the century the Mennonites proved to be an enormous irritant to the vast majority who in unprecedented numbers were fighting and dying for Prussia. One might well appreciate the frustration evoked when in 1813 with the French army bearing down on Danzig a Mennonite minister exclaimed from the pulpit, “Our religion has long held the principle that according to the teaching of Jesus Christ it is forbidden to kill people, including our enemies” (p. 97). By 1873 and shortly after three wars for unification of the German Empire, another Mennonite leader could only acknowledge that the principle of military exemption had collapsed. He specified a list that brought Mennonites fully into the Prussian fold and encouraged them now to die for king and country: “medals of honor, rights of incorporation, equality before the law with other Christians, security of property, and the glory of the fatherland and the nation” (p. 188). By the end of the nineteenth-century the Mennonite population like everyone else was willingly participating in universal conscription and claiming full citizenship status. Mennonites, it would seem, jettisoned their pacificism and became soldiers just in time to share in the slaughter of World War I.

This book provides an often year-to-year, sometimes month-to-month account of the twists and shifts in Mennonite-state relations, draft resolutions, debates, negotiations, litigations, cabinet deliberations, memoranda, and edicts that concerned conscription and exemption. The assiduous attention risks some fatigue while not often revealing conclusions equal to the devotion. Instead conclusions tend to repeat those already established in previous chapters: in the nineteenth century military service and nationalism were inseparable; the state as well as the dominant culture demanded loyalty to this prescription at the expense of traditional religious identity.

Meanwhile, while not wholly absent, the chronology and narrative lack the larger context of modernization, including, for example, the profound changes shaping and reshaping religious resurgence and secularization, rationalization, and aspiring bourgeois culture through the nineteenth century. Further contextualization might have demonstrated more convincingly the broader significance of a study that concentrates on a small minority tucked into the periphery of the Prusso-German population. Also the author's argument that the process of nationalization is built out of popular lived experience, contested identities, and material culture is perhaps not as original as he may propose.

Still the book makes a welcome contribution to the research in recent decades that is unveiling how religious populations, large and small, in Germany and across Europe negotiated new identities, identities that placed modern nationalism above long-held religious traditions. It makes original and thorough use of extant archival materials. The book also includes an appendix with important Mennonite-related documents and a comprehensive bibliography. It is rewarding reading for all those interested in German and European cultural and religious history.