Mennonites in Neumark 2

The initial post about the Neumark (aka Brandenburg, Driesen, or Netzebruch) Mennonites surveyed the beginnings of the settlement and sought to answer questions related to the emigration: When did the emigration occur? From where did the Mennonite families come? Why did they wish to move? A followup post addressed two additional questions: Why did the Prussian officials want the Mennonites to settle in the Netzebruch? Who owned the land on which they settled?

During the seventy years that Mennonites lived in the area, the inhabitants of Brenkenhoffswalde and Franztal exercised a greater role within the religious and political life of the Prussian Mennonite community, even within Prussian politics, than one would expect of two relatively small villages.

As previously mentioned, the early settlers of Brenkenhoffswalde “met in the homes of the members until the available rooms were too small. The government then gave them a building site for a church free of charge, and the funds for the building were donated by the Dutch Mennonites” (Hege 1957). So it was that on 8 November 1778 the Brenkenhoffswalde church met in its own building; Franztal followed suit nine years later, in 1787.

H. G. Mannhardt offers additional background about these Mennonites by identifying the group from which they derived (i.e., the Przechowka church):

They belonged to the “Groninger Mennonites,” or Groninger Old Flemish. This explains why they had not joined the larger Frisian congregation in the Culm lowlands at Schönsee, but had formed a congregation of their own with some scattered members at Thorn and Schwetz. They maintained contact and communion with these after they had come to Brenkenhoffswalde.

To be clear, the Przechowka church was not the only Mennonite church in the Schwetz/Culm area; there was another (Frisian) church in Schönsee, as well as other Mennonite churches at villages somewhat more distant.* Mannhardt’s point is that the Przechowka church was of the Groninger Old Flemish group, as were the Brenkenhoffswalde and Franztal churches.

Thanks to the Dutch Naamlijst der tegenwoordig in dienst zijnde predikanten der Mennoniten in de Vereenigde Nederlanden (here), we know the names of some of the preachers of the congregation at Brenkenhoffswalde: “Andreas Voet (Foth), Ernst Voet (Foth), Peter Jansz, Jacob Schmidt, and Peter Isaack” (Mannhardt 1953). The Peter Jansz/Jantz listed is probably the Brenkenhoffswalde preacher who, in 1814, “spent twenty-four hours in jail for resisting registration” for military service (Jantzen 2010, 93).

The most famous Mennonite figure to be associated with Brenkenhoffswalde, however, was not even born into a Mennonite family. Once again, Mannhardt explains:

In 1788 the Lutheran teacher Wilhelm Lange of Brenkenhoffswalde, who had been appointed to the position by the government, asked permission of the authorities to transfer to the Mennonite faith, since he had grown up and been educated among Mennonites and was inwardly bound to them. On 24 October 1788 he received permission to do so, on condition that his obligations to the state and his duties as a citizen would not suffer. Wilhelm Lange became a respected and influential member; in 1802 he was chosen preacher, and in 1810 elder, which office he still held when the congregation emigrated to Russia in 1834.

In late eighteenth-century Prussia, one could not easily change from one faith or church to another, for example, from Lutheran to Catholic or Lutheran to Mennonite. Joining a Mennonite church was especially limited, to prevent military-age males from converting in order to avoid military service. Lange, having served as the state-appointed teacher in Brenkenhoffswalde, was permitted to join the Mennonite church, though not with the benefit of thereby avoiding military conscription. Mennonite churches in the Vistula Delta rejected such converts, but Brenkenhoffswalde clearly permitted them (see Jantzen 2010, 116).

Letter of Wilhelm Lange to Peter Wedel, 1815.

Lange soon rose to prominence within the local congregation, then among the West Prussian Mennonite churches at large. As elder (from 1810 until his death in 1841), Lange exercised considerable authority and influence both in his own church and in Mennonite churches across West Prussia (as evidenced, e.g., in his letter to Elder Peter Wedel of Przechowka; for additional letters, see the Bethel College Mennonite Library and Archives here).

It seems likely that Lange also influenced the practices of the Brenkenhoffswalde church in a significant way when the congregation encountered a new challenge in the early nineteenth century. At that time “many groups hostile to the government were formed, and in consequence all meetings of private groups were prohibited, including the Mennonites. The only exception made to this ruling concerned meetings held under the auspices of the Bohemian Brethren” (Hege 1957). The church “at once formed connections with the Brethren [aka Moravians] and continued to meet unmolested” (Hege 1957).

Jantzen explains the significance of this association:

The Brenkenhofswalde congregation drank deeply from the wells of Moravian and early nineteenth-century Awakened revivalist piety, due perhaps to Lange’s own background. From these circles they adopted the ritual of child dedication as well as an interest in missions and education, all of which they communicated to Mennonites in the Vistula area and in Russia. The fusion of some aspects of Protestant identity with Mennonite theology in this congregation went so deep that they referred to themselves in an 1830 petition to the king as a “defenseless, Protestant, baptism-minded, Mennonite clan.”

The association of the Mennonites and Moravians is perhaps best exemplified by the fact that “in 1810 Elder Wilhelm Lange of Brenkenhofswalde undertook a preaching tour of the churches there together with a Pastor Jahr of the Moravian Brethren, and was well received” (Janzten 2010, 128). Peter M. Friesen adds, “Scores of people from other faiths thronged to hear him speak. His preaching tours in West Prussia were well-received and very successful” (Friesen 1980, 99)

Friesen elaborates further on the spiritual life of the Brenkenhoffswalde church, although we must be aware of the possibility that Friesen is projecting onto earlier history his own biases in favor of the Mennonite Brethren movement, which to a large extent has its roots in the Brenkenhoffswalde and Gnadenfeld churches (an entirely separate story):

Aside from the two regular Sunday services and one week-night service, they conducted private services here and there in the homes under the supervision of the elder and the ministers. These were not preaching services, but open discussions in which everyone was free to speak; the persons directly in charge were chosen from the ranks of the brotherhood by the congregation and its council, and designated as discussion leaders. (Friesen 1980, 98)**

Clearly, the Brenkenhoffswalde congregation was on the forefront of developments within the West Prussian Mennonite community, with Wilhelm Lange often leading the way. Although one might have expected this backwater church to have had little impact upon its religious and political world, for much of its history it exerted significant influence, even down to the very end of its habitation in the Neumark, which will be the subject of the following post.

Notes

* Is it possible that our direct ancestors attended one of the other Mennonite churches in the Schwetz or Przechowka area? We should not assume that all Bullers without fail attended any single church. This is an intriguing thought that must await evidence of some kind.

** Friesen argues that these developments did not arise from Moravian or Neopietist influence but rather were returns to earlier Mennonite practice (i.e., practices first established by Menno Simons). Friesen cites as evidence “an article in the Mennonitische Rundschau from the pen of the aged Elder Isaak Peters, formerly school teacher in Fuerstenau and Sparrau, Molotschna, South Russia, then elder of the Pordenau Church, and now, since 1874, in Henderson, Nebraska, one of our most knowledgeable, if not the most knowledgeable student of Anabaptist literature” (Friesen 1980, 71–72, citing Mennonitische Rundschau volume 37, 1906).

If that name sounds vaguely familiar, it is because the Isaac Peters in question was Grandma Malinda’s great-grandfather, whom we first encountered here.

Works Cited

Friesen, Peter M. 1980. The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia (1789–1910). 2nd ed. Translated by J. B. Toews et al. Fresno, CA: Board of Christian Literature, General Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches.

Hege, Christian. 1957. Netzebruch (Poland). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.

Jantzen, Mark. 2010. Mennonite German Soldiers: Nation, Religion, and Family in the Prussian East, 1772–1880. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Mannhardt, H. G. 1953. Brenkenhoffswalde and Franztal (Lubusz Voivodeship, Poland). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.