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Foundation Names Executive Director

D.F. Plett Foundation Names Executive Director

The Telling of the Conservative Mennonite Story Enhanced

1 June 2006

The D.F. Plett Historical Research Foundation Inc. is pleased to announce the appointmentof Dr. Hans Werner as its executive director. The decision was ratified at the Foundation's spring meeting held on May 8 at the Mennonite Heritage Village in Steinbach, Manitoba.

Werner, 53 and a native of Steinbach and past resident of Winkler where he was part owner of a farm corporation and served as chair of the local Credit Union, now resides in Winnipeg with his wife Diana. Hans and Diana attend the Bethel Mennonite Church and have three grown children.

Werner who speaks Low German and High German, has just completed a history book on Winkler, Living Between Worlds. In 2002 he received a doctorate degree from the University of Manitoba with a study of the migration of Germans from Eastern Europe to Canada and Germany and their struggle in establishing a sense of home in new places. Over the past few years Werner has taught Canadian and Mennonite history at the University of Winnipeg.

Werner's duties with the Plett Foundation will include administering its grants program, co-editing the Preservings magazine, overseeing the publication and distribution of history books on Old Colony and other conservative Mennonite groups, and general administrative tasks. The Plett Foundation office will be located at the University of Winnipeg, 515 Portage Avenue, close to the historic downtown Hudson's Bay store. As his position with the Plett Foundation is a half time placement, Werner has also been granted a half time position in the teaching of Canadian and Mennonite history at the University of Winnipeg.

Werner can be reached at 204-786-9352. All correspondence to the Foundation as well as letters to The Preservings magazine can still be sent to D.F. Plett Foundation, Box 1960, Steinbach, Manitoba.

In accepting his new appointment Werner expressed his enthusiasm for the mandate of the Foundation. He noted that “I am pleased to be involved with this important work to recover, preserve and tell the story of the Mennonites who migrated to Canada in the 1870s and then spread to Saskatchewan and Alberta, and from there to Mexico, Paraguay, Bolivia and other Central and South American countries, with many descendants returning to Canada.” Royden Loewen, chair of the Plett Foundation board noted: “We are very pleased that a person with Hans’s range of abilities and interests, and his energy and sense of integrity, will administer the foundation’s programs. We are confident that the Foundation’s mission to further a respectful approach to the history of conservative Low German Mennonites of the Americas will be significantly enhanced with Hans’s appointment.”

The Plett Foundation was founded by the late Delbert F. Plett of Steinbach, and is funded by an inheritance from his estate.

New Release by:Royden Loewen, President (204-786-9391)
D.F. Plett Historical Research Foundation Inc.