»Eine offene Beleidigung«  Jantzen 85 clusion.»Luther sagte von dem Kardinal Cajetanus in Augsburg im Jahre 1518, er verstände sich auf die Bibel wie der Esel aufs Harfen; ein ähnliches Urteil über Fontanes Fähigkeit, Missionsvorgänge darzustellen, dürfte so ziemlich das Richtige treffen.« 18 Selbsterlösung Wedel opened his third and final review segment with a brief comment on literary theory.»In einem Roman sucht man heute ja im allgemeinen die kün­stlerische Schilderung einer Idee oder eines Elementes im Kulterleben.« He goes on to warn his largely rural and self-educated Mennonite readership that a Christian reader needs to take care not to inadvertently acquire spiritual dangerous material,»was er bald in den Ofen wandern lassen muß«. Wedel claimed that one is reading a mirror image of what the educat­ed world thinks about the issue at hand. Quitt would have been in this cate­gory of works to discard if not for its Mennonite content, leading Wedel to speculate, as we have seen, on where Fontane got his Mennonite material. 19 Wedel identified the protagonist Lehnert Menz as the carrier of this main idea. He was full of praise, like many other critics, of Fontane’s description of the struggle between Opitz and Lehnert in the first half of the novel. Once Lehnert arrived among the Mennonites, Wedel credited his conversion to the Mennonite teaching of Wehrlosigkeit along with Ruth, who represents »die Größe einer edlen weiblichen Seele«, the possibility of inner change represented by baptism, and the preaching of Obadja on the evil of murder and the need for repentance. 20 The final act, however, completely ruined the novel for Wedel. The note that Lehnert wrote in his own blood as he laid dying and the letter that Ob­adja wrote back to the Gemeindeamt in Silesia proved for Wedel that»Seine Buße hat seine Schuld gesühnt,[...] Selbsterlösung«. Putting the modern idea of redeeming oneself into the mouth of an elder was for Wedel simply»eine Verleumdung unseres Standpunktes«. Wedel ended by noting that such ide­as were good enough for Goethe in Faust or for Auerbach in Auf der Höhe, but for Mennonites it constituted a public insult. 21 How might we interpret Wedel’s disdain for a novel that otherwise puts Mennonites and one of their traditional doctrines, Wehrlosigkeit, in such favorable light? Especially since a minority of critics over the years have highlighted the critique of militarism and authoritarianism and the need for peace and tolerance as the main, and politically subversive, idea in Quitt? 22 One possibility would be to note that the traditional Mennonite approach to peace drew directly from the Bible and the life and teachings of Jesus and not from social or political considerations. Therefore, Wedel´s perception that Fontane watered down Mennonite spiritual life to be one of ritual and