A very public congregational dispute between artist Enoch
Seemann and Flemish Elder Georg Hansen in Danzig in the 1690s set new limits
for Mennonite cultural participation and cemented the central role of the
elder.
Renowned Canadian novelist Rudy Wiebe has put the story into
a beautiful historical narrative in Sweeter than all the World, based largely
on Harry Loewen’s historical tale of Seemann in Cities of Refuge. More recently
we have a full text reconstruction of the key lost pamphlet and replies, by
Hans Rudolf Lavater. Here is the gist of the story.
Seemann was born in the Hansa city of Elbing (Poland) to a
Mennonite minister and artist—a reminder of the sophisticated urban culture
that some refugees brought east. Seemann travelled abroad and apprenticed in
Holland, then settled in Danzig where he also married. As an accomplished
portrait painter, he was disciplined by Elder Hansen and the congregation in
1697 for painting “graven images” and was barred from communion, footwashing,
and membership meetings (note 1).
This was an odd case, for Menno Simons too sat for
portraits, Seemann argues, and all Mennonites were familiar with the gripping
human scenes in the Martyrs Mirror, as well as the elaborate ceiling art in the
Red Chamber of Danzig City Hall and paintings in its Treasury created by
Flemish Mennonite artist Isaac von den Blocke.
Yet in obedience to the church, Seemann cut up two of his
portraits before three congregational representatives and was then accepted
back into the congregation. When minister shop-owners however did not destroy
their painted signboards, Seemann felt free to return to his art which the
congregation saw as deceit. An additional conflict arose when Hansen said the
congregation could not permit Seemann to look at human figures, especially
“exposed females” which he did “without shame” (note 2).
Hansen’s teaching on the “new creation” or the Christian
life sought to warn against the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and
the pride of life—all rooted in the power of sin (note 3). Seemann’s portraits
were consistent with the best of seventeenth-century Dutch portraiture painting
(Mennonite congregations in Holland were well represented in the “Dutch Golden
Age” of painting; note 4). But unlike von den Blocke’s work, Seemann’s art was
without an obvious moralistic narrative, e.g., of choosing between the “narrow
and broad way” (note 5).
At a second church “brotherhood meeting” Seemann was placed
under the ban and no longer referred to as “brother” by church members, but
only “friend;” even his wife was not to share table or bed with him. In
defiance, Seemann published a “well-intended brotherly admonition and faithful
warning made public for all by a lover of the truth” with the title: “The
Revelation and Punishment of Georg Hansen’s Folly” (note 6). This is likely the
first Mennonite pamphlet (1697) published in Danzig and Poland, and in it
Seemann attempted to “admonish” believers and also to expose the Flemish
elder’s ignorance and maze of deceit, as well as to shame him into
reconsideration. Hansen’s charge of making “graven images” was not only a poor
reading of scripture, but superstitious and inconsistent, guided neither by
divine nor worldly justice, according to Seemann. He argued that the elder
reigned over others by his affects alone, even breaking up marriages—a civil
matter—with the ban, which Seemann leveraged to bring before city council (note
7).
Hansen, while a cobbler, was the most theologically literate
and eloquent Mennonite apologist in Danzig since Dirk Philips. Hansen judged
the art of portraiture painting as “impudent,” “frivolous,” and vain (note 8),
but what he really could not tolerate was Seemann’s free-spirited eccentricity
as an artist and lack of respect and honour towards the congregation and its
leaders.
This very public conflict gives profile to the struggles of
the Flemish church in Danzig and Poland with early modernity. Are God-created
human beings primarily “individuals” responsible to fulfill their unique
spiritual and intellectual potentiality, or called primarily to obey God and to
test and live this out in mutual submission to the Christian community? What
are the limits to the authority of leaders in a believers’ church? Hansen often
spoke of these “last evil times” when “many live as enemies of the cross of
Christ, and their destiny is damnation (Philippians 3:17f.; note 9). That so
few have not “defiled themselves” (note 10) is sign for the faithful that they
are living in “the last days” (note 11). The Seemann case offers a vivid
account of the excesses of congregational discipline that had burdened
Mennonites now for a century in an attempt to preserve a pure and spotless
church.
–Arnold Neufeldt-Fast
---Notes---
Note 1: Cf. the Second Commandment: Exodus 20:4, with Deut.
4: 16-19 and other texts. Cf. Rudy Wiebe, Sweeter than all the World (Toronto:
Jackpine House, 2001), 111–136. Harry Loewen, Cities of Refuge: Stories from
Anabaptist-Mennonite History and Life (Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 2010), 79-85.
The key document is Rudolf Lavater exhaustive reconstruction of documents and
the story: “Der Danziger Maler Enoch I Seemann, die Danziger Mennoniten und die
Kunst,” Mennonitica Helvetica 36 (2013): 11–97.
Note 2: Lavater,
“Danziger Maler Enoch I Seemann,” 27, 31, 42f., 46, 91f., 111.
Note 3: Cf. summary of Hansen’s Spiegel des Levens in Harvey
Plett, “Georg Hansen and the Danzig Flemish Mennonite Church: A Study in
Continuity” (PhD dissertation, University of Manitoba, 1991), 318f., https://mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca/xmlui/handle/1993/7218.
Hansen’s Confession oder Kurtze und einfältige Glaubens-Bekänetenüsse derer
Mennonisten in Preußen, so man nennet die Clarichen (1678; http://pbc.gda.pl/dlibra/docmetadata?from=rss&id=35959)
and appended examination is in line with Peter Twisck’s confession (in von
Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 373–410); Twisck speaks of humanity after the fall as
“corrupted” and “inclined to sin,” but affirms freedom of the will by God’s
grace after the Fall. This larger message is arguably present in von Blocke’s
works in Danzig City Hall; cf. Rainer Kobe, “Isaac von den Blocke, Painter and
Mennonite at Gdańsk,” in European Mennonites and the Challenge of Modernity
over Five Centuries. Contributors, Detractors, and Adaptors, edited by Mark
Jantzen et al. (North Newton, KS: Bethel College, 2016).
Note 4: Cf. for example Robert W. Regier, “The Anabaptists
and Art: The Dutch Golden Age of Painting,” Mennonite Life 23, no. 1 (January
1968) 16–21, https://mla.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/pre2000/1968jan.pdf;
Hendrick Meihuizen, “Dutch Painters in the Time of Vondel and Rembrandt,” in A
Legacy of Faith: The Heritage of Menno Simons, edited by Cornelius J. Dyck,
119–135 (Newton, KS: Faith and Life, 1962), https://archive.org/details/legacyoffaithher00unse. See “The Dutch Golden Age:
Mennonite to the Core” by Lauren Friesen, lecture at Kauffman Museum at Bethel
College, October 2021, https://youtu.be/a38xkoTYZng.
Note 5: The name of von Blocke’s painting in the Protestant
St. Catherine Church in Danzig.
Note 6: Lavater,
“Danziger Maler Enoch I Seemann,” esp. 80, 89, 91, 92, 93.
Note 7: Lavater,
“Danziger Maler Enoch I Seemann,” 43, 45, 94. For a contemporary English
perspective on life in Danzig—including its forms of civil punishment,
feasting, food, entertainment, recreation and church life—cf. Travels, Travels
of Peter Mundy, vol. 4: Travels in Europe, 1639–1647, edited by Richard C.
Temple (London: Hakluyt Society, 1925), 167–193, https://archive.org/details/travelspetermun00mundgoog/page/n8/mode/2up.
Note 8: Lavater,
“Danziger Maler Enoch I Seemann,” 32, 37, 71, 145. Hansen uses Luther’s
translation of Acts 19:19, in which those who practiced “fürwitzige”
(frivolous) arts brought their scrolls to be publicly burnt. The Greek original
refers to magical arts, as found in most translations.
Note 9: Hansen, Glaubens-Bericht,
73.
Note 10: Hansen, Glaubens-Bericht,
74.
Note 11: Hansen, Glaubens-Bericht, 78.
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