»Eine offene Beleidigung«  Jantzen 79 community central to the message of the book. The circulation of this colos­sal cycle, however, eluded Wedel and Goerz at the time and, in its entirety, scholars to this day. Cornelius Heinrich Wedel Understanding C. H. Wedel is one important place to begin unpacking this process. Besides serving as Bethel College’s first president, he was also an ordained Mennonite minister and leader of the congregation that became Bethel College Mennonite Church. Comparing his background to that of Ob­adja Hornbostel, the Mennonite elder or congregational leader in Quitt, of­fers perspective on his negative review that focused on Mennonite aspects and not depictions of geography, Native Americans, American society, or narrative deficiencies like most other Fontane critics. Wedel was born in 1860 in the Molotschna Mennonite Colony in Russia, today an area about 50  miles south of the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia. The family joined a large migration of Mennonites to Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Manitoba starting in 1874 as they sought to avoid newly instituted military conscription. Their congregation in Russia, Alexanderwohl, settled fifteen Cornelius Heinrich Wedel and his wife Suzanne Richert Wedel, ca. 1905