Vistula delta Mennonites settled in the delta of the Vistula between the late 16th century and 1945.
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The Mennonite movement was founded by Menno Simons, a Dutch priest who left the Catholic Church in 1536 and became a leader within the Anabaptist movement. The Dutch regions of Friesland and Flanders as well as the German regions of Eastern Frisia and Holstein became a center of the Mennonites. Religious persecution in the Netherlands under Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba however forced many Mennonites to leave in the 16th century.[1]
The first Anabaptist, a native of Prussia, is reported in 1526 in Marienburg (Malbork). In the 1530s Dutch Mennonites moved to the area of Danzig (Gdansk) in the Polish province of Royal Prussia, a town connected with the Netherlands by traditional grain trade. Menno Simons apparently visited the community in 1549 and in 1569 Dirk Philips founded the first Mennonite Church in Danzig. Soon about 1,000 Mennonites lived in the city.[2][3][4]
In 1552 the Danzig city council allowed Mennonites to practise their faith but refused to grant Mennonites the formal status of a Citizen, a situation unchanged until the city became a part of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1793. As a result most of them settled in the suburbs of Schidlitz (Siedlce), Petershagen and Alt-Schottland (Stare Szkoty).[5][6] The relation between the city council and the Mennonites was often ambivalent. Though their faith was tolerated in general, protests of local craftsmen caused the ban of Mennonite traders and craftsmen to participate in the annual trade fairs. In 1582 local guild’s complaints against the employment of Mennonite linnen weavers by the Catholic St. Bridget's church were judged by the City council, which decided to limit the number of Mennonite weavers to one per abbey. In 1583 the council unsuccessfully requested the Polish King to dislodge the Mennonites in the suburb of Alt-Schottland while in 1586 the King asked the council not to tolerate this “human plague” inside the city.[6]
However, the Mennonite community in Danzig grew and played an important role in grain trade with the Netherlands.
While the situation of Mennonites in the city was often complicated, the settlement in the area along the Vistula became an appealing alternative.
Large areas of the Vistula Delta were in the possession of the city or its burghers. This area was however devastated in the horsemen’s war and furthermore destroyed by a severe flood in 1540. In 1543 the city council reported that many villages of formerly 15 to 20 farms did not exist any more.
Michael Loitz, a Danzig councillor and merchant, had received a thirty-year lease of an area at the river Tiege (Tuga) by the Polish King and in 1562 he invited Mennonites to settle here and cultivate the Vistula marshes. Dutch-style windmills to drain the swamps and Dutch-style houses coined the area from now on. Mennonites were allowed to run their own schools but had to pay school fees for the public school as well. While these charges remained usually undisputed the duties to local Catholic and Lutheran parishes were often refused.[7]
The different origin of the Mennonites perpetuated in different theological opinions. While a conservative “Flamish” group dominated the Danzig community, a more liberal “Frisian” group existed along the Vistula. The “Flamish” group kept close contacts to the Netherlands, printed Dutch-language bibles and invited Dutch sermonizers, while the Dutch influence in the delta region declined.[8][9]
Plautdietsch, a mixture of Dutch and the Low Prussian dialect of the Vistula Delta, became the typical language of the Mennonites in this region.[10]The first German-language sermon in the Mennonite church of Danzig in 1762 caused protests of the community members and led to a return to the Dutch language, however in 1768 German hymnbooks were used and only some members continued to use Dutch.[4]
In 1772 the Vistula delta and the Danzig suburbs became part of the Kingdom of Prussia after the Partitions of Poland, the city of Danzig after the second partition in 1793 (with 577 Mennonites).[9]
In 1772 12,032 Mennonites settled in the now Prussian territory. Though their faith was tolerated, the Mennonites became subject of special laws and extra taxes. Only men who had served in the Prussian Army were allowed to purchase land tenure, conscientious objectors were subject to special charges. These regulations led to a large number of young Mennonites without economical prospect.
In 1786 Georg von Trappe, a Colonization agent of the Russian government, sought to recruit settlers for the regions recently conquered from the Ottoman Empire. In the following decades about 6,000 Mennonites, most of them from the delta settlements, [11] left to Russia, forming the roots of the Russian Mennonites.[12] The first Mennonite settlement in Russia, Chortitza Colony, was founded by these emigrees in 1789.[2]
The remaining Mennonites assimilated more and more. In the liberation wars of 1813 some young Mennonites were prepared to join the forces against Napoleon. In the Spring of Nations of 1848 Mennonites joined the armed municipal militia (Bürgerwehr), which included the right to bear arms. When after the foundation of the North German Confederation a general conscription was invented, the Danzig community managed to receive the exceptional permission to serve only in non-combat troops, however a group of Mennonites emigrated to North America to avoid all kind of military service.[11]
At the end of World War II about 1,000 Mennonites lived in Danzig, along with the rest of the populace Mennonites were expelled after World War II to West Germany,[12] many of them moving on to North and South America.[11]
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