Biographical Sketch

Mary Martha Brieger was born on June 7, 1891, in Riga, Latvia. Her parents were Louis Christopher Brieger (1852-1910) and Clara Gertrude Goeschel (1862-1917). She was the middle child between two sisters, Erika and Irmgard. She was confirmed as a young woman in the German Lutheran church in Riga on May 31, 1909.

On May 22, 1915, she married Jakob J. Reimer (1891-1937), whom she met in Riga. Jakob, a Russian Mennonite from Karassan, Crimea, was an electrical engineer trained at the Thüringer Institute (Ilmenau, Germany) and working in Riga at the time. During WWI, as the German army advanced, the couple moved to St. Petersburg, Russia. Mary worked as an accountant (Malcolm and Sons) and Jakob as an engineer (Mantel and Co.).

Eventually, the couple became part of a small Mennonite community in Moscow trying to find a way to maintain their Mennonite faith and values during the upheaval of the Russian Revolution and civil war. Mary worked as a secretary to Alvin Miller, director of the American Mennonite Relief (AMR) office in Moscow, and Jakob worked at several alternative service assignments during wartime (e.g., ambulance train medic and driving instructor for the Red Cross) and as an engineer after the war. A son, Harold (1923-1996), was born to them. In 1925, the couple divorced.

On September 11, 1926, Mary married Cornelius Franz (C.F.) Klassen (1894-1954), bringing Harold with her into the new family. CF was working with the Allrussischer Mennonitischer Landwirtschaftlicher Verein (AMLV) or Agricultural Union, which also had an office in the same building housing the AMR office where Mary worked. The Agriculture Union’s mandate was to negotiate with the Bolshevik government a way to reconstruct Mennonite agricultural life within the new communist reality (1923-1928).

After the Bolshevik government closed the AMLV in 1928, Mary and CF were able to secure exit visas for their family, which now included another son, Walfried (1927-2013). They, along with some 21,000 other émigrés, felt the prospects of maintaining their Mennonite way of life and values in the new Bolshevik society were swiftly becoming untenable. On November 30, 1928, Mary, CF, and their boys left Liverpool on the CPR steam ship, Duchess of Atholl, arriving in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada, on December 8, 1928 (Canadian Board of Colonization card #4972).

Mary and CF and their family joined several of CF’s siblings and their families already living in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Mary helped CF in his new role collecting the travel debt owed by the Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization to the Canadian Pacific Railway (approximately 2 million dollars). Full repayment was completed in 1946. Three more children were born to them: Herbert (1929-), Tinalie (1931-1933), and Irmgard (1931-1979).

On August 4, 1935, Mary was baptized in the Assiniboine River. Minister C.N. Hiebert officiated at the baptism and Minister Jakob Epp gave the message. That evening both CF and Mary were welcomed as members of Winnipeg’s North End Mennonite Brethren Church, CF by transfer and Mary by baptism.

In 1948, the family moved to Abbotsford, British Columbia. During the post-war years (1945-1954), CF traveled back and forth from Europe to Canada helping to organize passage of Russian Mennonites out of Europe to North and South America. He died unexpectedly in 1954 while on assignment in Europe.

Mary was best known for her courage, sense of humour, resourcefulness, and trust in God’s faithful provision. In 1971, a debilitating stroke severely curtailed her abilities. She died five years later at Menno Hospital (Abbotsford) in 1976 at the age of eighty-five.

According to her biographer, Maureen Klassen, “For some, Mary was the woman who had stood tall beside her husband in his role as respected leader of his people. To others, she was the woman who was always there behind this great figure in the Mennonite story. For her children, she was all too often the woman who was left behind without him, to take care of the family as he responded to the demanding challenges of his responsibilities with various Mennonite organizations” (It Happened in Moscow, p. 1).

More details of Mary Brieger Klassen’s life can be found in Herb Klassen and Maureen Klassen, Ambassador to His People: C.F. Klassen and the Russian Mennonite Refugees (Winnipeg: Kindred Productions, 1990) and Maureen Klassen, It Happened in Moscow: A Memoir of Discovery (Winnipeg: Kindred Productions, 2013).