Hermann Fast (27 April 1860-1935) was born at Gnadenfeld, Molotschna, Russia as the thirteenth of fourteen children of Isaak Fast, who had come to Russia from the Marienburger Werder, Prussia. For four years he attended the Ohrloff Vereinsschule and received catechetical instruction under Elder Bernhard Harder. After this he returned to Gnadenfeld where he graduated, after three years, from the Zentralschule. In 1878-79 he taught school at Rudnerweide. The next year while teaching at Lutheran school in Berdyansk he had a conversion experience after which he attended the Bible school of St. Chrischona near Basel for three years.

After his return to Russia in 1883, he taught for two years at the Musterschule of Halbstadt. In 1885 he went to Feodosiya, Crimea, where he preached in a Lutheran church and studied the Russian language. Here Countess Schonnenlov of St. Petersburg invited him to become the tutor of her grandson, a position that he held between 1886 and 1894. On June 22, 1887, in the Baptist Chapel at Riga, he was married to Elizabeth Garinovitch, a Greek Catholic who had been a private tutor at Halbstadt while Fast was teaching there. Together they would have five children.

In 1892-93 he accompanied two English Quakers, Joseph Neive and John Bellow, to the Caucasus to visit exiled Evangelicals, serving as an interpreter. Because of this and other religious activities he was watched by the Russian police. In 1895 Fast and his wife, together with the widow of the poet N. A. Nekrassov, settled on an estate near Simferopol, Crimea, and lived there until 1897. Since the police were watching him here also, he accepted the invitation of F. W. Baedeker to go to Rumania, where he taught a private school in Constanta and served as a minister of a German Baptist church in Dobruya.

In 1901 Hermann Fast and his wife went to Canada and settled in Petrovka, a Dukhobor village north of the Saskatchewan River. Here he and his wife continued their religious work among the Russians, carrying on farming, and teaching for a time in the Quaker-built school of Petrovka. He also represented the British and Foreign Bible Society, traveling to various provinces in Canada. Elizabeth Fast died on 27 February 1915.

Elder David Toews said at the funeral of Hermann Fast, "He served the Dukhobor village as organizer, counselor, and minister to the welfare of their souls. He was a true child of God, not bound to a denomination but in all races and tongues found brothers and sisters."

In Petersburg, Russia, Fast was a member of the Baptist Church, but in Canada he was a member of the Waldheim (Saskatchewan, Canada) Mennonite Brethren Church. During the last years of his life he lived in Perdue, Saskatchewan.

Bibliography

Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Scottdale, Pennsylvania, and Waterloo, Ontario, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, pp. 315-316. All rights reserved. For information on ordering the encyclopedia visit the Herald Press website.

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