Lichti, Ernst (1890-1969)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 1969 May 29 p. 11, 14

Birth date: 1890 Apr 25

text of obituary:

From Germany to America

Gardener Held To Faith through War, Uncertainty By Nelson P. Springer

(Read at the funeral of Ernst Lichti, gardener on the staff of Goshen college since 1957. The service was held May 16 at the Goshen College Mennonite Church.)

OFFENE TUEREN (Open Doors) is the title of a magazine published by the Bible School which Ernst Lichti attended in his early thirties. In some ways the title symbolizes the character of the man. An openness to adapt to change helped him to make the adjustments necessary when a man and his family must move from place to place as the Lichtis did so many times in their 44 years of life together.

His spirit of openheartedness was apparent to those who knew him casually. Others knew the self-sacrifice he was willing to make, the criticism to which he was willing to open himself, when his conscience led him to help those who were oppressed. Those who shared with him in Sunday school class discussions recognized in him a man who maintained an open channel of faith with his God through prayer and Bible study.

ERNST LICHTI'S parents, Johannes and Elisabeth (Hege) Lichti, represented two Mennonite families that had been prominent in the Palatinate for nearly two centuries before his birth, April 25, 1890. Both family names have been associated with the Branchweilerhof, an old estate near Neustadt-an-der-Hardt west of the Rhine River and southwest of Mannheim that had been been a Jesuit hospital, was rented to Mennonite farmers for many years, and was finally purchased by Mennonites.

In his late teens Ernst spent two years in the Landwertschaftschule (Agricultural School) at Frankenthal not far from his home community, where he received basic training in general farming practices that prepared him for the careful and scientific work which marked his farming and gardening. With no provision for exemption for conscientious objectors in Germany, he spent four years during World War I in the army medical corps.

FROM 1919 Ernst attended the Missionshaus Bibelschule at Wiedenest, a strongly evangelical school with an emphasis on self-supported missions. His studies in New Testament Greek, church history, missionary methods, and theology helped to mold his personal piety and to prepare him for Christian leadership in his community in later years.

In the meantime Ernst's parents had purchased the Branchweilerhof, and he returned there when he concluded his studies at Wiedenest. He married Friederike Hunn of the Odenwald area east of the Rhine March 22, 1925. They remained at the Branchweilerhof a few months and then bought a farm, the Muensterhof, where they lived for two years and where their first son Dietrich was born. They spent a few months at the Branchweilerhof again during which time a second son, Juergen, was born.

WITH THEIR two small sons, they moved to the Niederlausitz area southeast of Berlin, not far from the eastern border of Germany, where they purchased a farm at Jessener Meuhle. The following years were not easy years, but they were good years, he told a student who interviewed him for the Goshen College Record some months ago. They sold some of the produce from the truck garden and orchard on their 20-acre farm to customers who came to the farm and sent the rest to market. Ernst succeeded in raising fruit in an area where fruit supposedly could not be grown. At Jessener Muehle, three more children — Ekkehard, Ruediger, and Ulrike — joined the family.

There were no Mennonite congregations near Jessener Muehle, and the Lichtis affiliated with the Evangelical Free Church. A large room in their home served as a meeting place for the local group. Although he was not an ordained minister, Ernst was one of the active leaders of the local group, frequently directing their worship and study in the absence of the regular minister.

Ernst's nonresistant background led him to resist pressures to join Nazi organizations during the 30s. From 1938 to 1941, when Hitler's persecution of the Jews was increasing in intensity, the Lichtis rented their farm to an organization which helped Jewish youth prepare for emigration to Palestine by training the boys in agriculture and the girls in housework.

THERE HAD been no direct military activity in their part of Germany until the Soviet troops moved through the area in February, 1945. As the Russians moved past Jessener Muehle, the Lichtis realized that they could not risk remaining there and decided to flee to the West. Agreeing to help a neighbor and his daughter in return for the use of a horse and carriage, they began their hazardous journey back to relatives and friends in the Palatinate. With Ernst preceding the group on bicycle to select a route that would not bring them into contact with the Russian soldiers, with Ekkehard relaying messages from his father to his mother, and with Mrs. Lichti driving the horse and caring for the rest of the party, they manages to work their way around the Russian front line.

They had had to leave behind them their farm and all of their personal possessions, except the few things they could bring with them in the carriage. Dietrich, who had been drafted when he was 18 had been missing in action since late 1944. Juergen had been drafted before his sixteenth birthday and was to become a prisoner-of-war with the German surrender in May, 1945.

The Lichtis spent the first year after their flight in Frieda's home community. In the spring of 1946 they returned to the Branchweilerhof and lived with relatives there for the next five years, looking for a place where they could reestablish their home. Two of Frieda's sisters were living in America — one in Chicago and one in Oregon. With their encouragement and help, the family decided to emigrate, arriving in Chicago during the Christmas season of 1951.

THEY SPENT the next year as hired help on a dairy farm at Harvard, Ill., northwest of Chicago. In 1953 they moved to the Tiskilwa, Ill. community, where they found employment on a farm and in a sawmill. Here, too, they again found fellowship with a Mennonite congregation.

In 1957, with Ekkehard in 1-W service and Ulrika [sic Ulrike] a student at Goshen College, Ernst and Frieda moved once more — this time to the home on River Vista Avenue in Goshen. Again Ernst's skill as a gardener has been demonstrated in the garden plot at his home, where he raised enough to supply the family's needs and to share with neighbors. On the campus of Goshen College, the well-tended flowerbeds and foundation plantings have added much to the attractiveness of the campus. He was ready to help his neighbors as they came to him with special problems.

Ernst was faithful in his attendance at the services of the College Mennonite Church.

AT THE TIME of his 79th birthday he retired from his official service to Goshen College.

Ernst suffered a heart attack Sunday morning, May 11. With a second and more severe attack Tuesday morning, he stepped through the open door toward which his life had been turned for so many years.

He is survived by his wife, four children (Juergen of Fort Wayne, Ind.; Ekkehard of Goshen; Ruediger of Satellite Beach, Fla.; and Ulrike of Bankok [sic Bangkok], Thailand), six grandchildren, three brothers, and three sisters. A host of relatives and friends join the family in sympathy for their loss and in thankfulness for the life he lived.