Reading recommendation

My before-falling-asleep reading the past several weeks has been an interesting and informative book that relates to the Polish and Prussian years of our family history: Peter J. Klassen’s Mennonites in Early Modern Poland and Prussia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).

The book’s table of contents includes the following chapters and sections:

Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. A Haven in Troubled Times
Chapter 2. A Legacy of Rivers and Dikes
Chapter 3. The Challenges of Urban Settings
Chapter 4. Along the Banks of Poland’s Mighty River
Chapter 5. Bridges between the Netherlands and the Vistula Delta
Chapter 6. Psalms, Sermons, and Congregations
Chapter 7. A House Divided
Chapter 8. Conflicting Loyalties in a Progressive Society
Chapter 9. A Changing Vision
Epilogue
Appendix 1. Selected Documents concerning Religious Liberty
Appendix 2.  Key Events and Dates in Polish History
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index

In a full and informative survey and assessment of the book, Steven Schroeder writes that this book “ is the most comprehensive, and widely accessible, examination of the Polish/Prussian Mennonites in the early modern era.” He elaborates:

Utilizing an impressive range of archival resources, Klassen argues that Poland was a safe haven for persecuted Mennonites during the first decades of the Reformation. The author shows how, after Poles invited Mennonites to farm the wetlands of the Vistula Delta, Mennonites were “generally supported by a tolerant political and economic structure [which] allowed [them] to flourish” (46). The author focuses the first five chapters on the economic and political interaction and agreements between Mennonites and the various local governments and ecclesiastical authorities in Royal Prussia (Polish rule) and Ducal Prussia (Hohenzollern rule). The agreements, mostly conducted at the local level, relied on mutual benefit: as long as the Mennonites were of value economically, their “heretical” theology would be tolerated and they would be granted limited privileges. Mennonites could lease and farm the land, set up their own religious congregations and schools, and were exempt from military service. However, Mennonites were always insecure to some degree, as they were not equals with their Catholic and mainline Protestant neighbors. (for the full review, see here)

Chapter 4 is of greatest interest to us, as it discusses the development and expansion of Mennonite communities in the Vistula River basin. Even though this chapter does not mention any Bullers by name, it clues us in to what happened with a certain Buller living in the village of Jeziorka. More on that in a subsequent post.

If you are interested in the Polish/Prussian years of Mennonites in general or of our family history in particular, I highly commend this book. Amazon sells both a hardcover edition and a Kindle edition; the latter is fairly inexpensive and can be read on not just Kindles but an iPad or any other tablet for which Amazon has developed a Kindle app.