Skip to main content

Plague and Pestilence in Danzig, 1709

Russian and Prussian Mennonites trace at least 200 years of their story through Danzig and Royal Prussia, where episodes of plague and pestilence were not unfamiliar (note 1). Mennonites arrived primarily from the Low Countries and in large numbers in the middle of the 16th century—approximately 750 families or 3,000 refugees and settlers between 1527 and 1578 to Danzig and Royal Prussia (note 2). At this time Danzig was undergoing tremendous demographic, cultural and economic transformation, almost tripling in population in less than 100 years. With 80% of Poland’s foreign trade handled through this port city (note 3), Danzig saw the arrival of new people from across Europe, many looking to find work in the crammed and bustling city (note 4). Maria Bogucka’s research on Danzig in this era brings the streets of the maritime city to life:

“Sanitation facilities were inadequate … The level of personal hygiene was low. Most people lived close together: five or six to a room, sleeping two of three to a bed, sharing towels, eating from one bowl. As a result, contagious diseases were easily spread either by direct contact between individuals via the respiratory system, or by use of the same utensils, or transferred by insects such as fleas and lice. Venereal diseases spread rapidly mainly because of the influx to Danzig of large numbers of single men. The coastal climate of the city — cold and damp — as well as the insufficient heating and the use of cellars for housing the poor, resulted in a high frequency of rheumatic and pulmonary ailments.” (Note 5)

According to the Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence, the 1602 plague in Danzig killed 19,000 (note 6). In 1653, the city recorded some 600 weekly plague deaths for a time, with 11,116 deaths over the year. Four years later during the Swedish War, another 7,569 Danzigers died of the plague, compared to 2,569 births. And again in 1660, some 5,515 died of the plague, compared to 1,916 births in the city (note 7). Danzig’s hospitals at this time included infirmaries--the Pestilence Hospital, a Smallpox Hospital and Lazaretto or quarantine /isolation hospital (see pic; note 8).

We do not know how this series of plagues beginning in 1653 impacted the Mennonite community. But after a natural disaster caused dams to break and the lands to flood in 1667, a powerful government official for Pomerelia (near Danzig) argued that God was now punishing Poland and Danzig for its tolerance of Anabaptists. The official found broad support among the nobles in parliament for a plan to deport all Mennonites—which fortunately did not come to pass (note 9).

Danzig’s worst plague however hit in 1709 (note 10); Danzig saw about 2,000 such deaths per week in September and October. The city even paid for two extra chaplains in 1709 as "Pestprediger" who would visit the sick and conduct funerals for the poor. Total plague deaths that year: 14,533 persons. Pic 2 gives a sad glimpse of the societal breakdown in Danzig.

According to the Danzig Flemish Mennonite Church record of deaths, there were 15 deaths in 1707, 17 in 1708, an astonishing 409 deaths in 1709, and then down to 9 in 1710 (note 11). Not including unbaptized children, the Danzig Flemish Mennonites recorded 13 deaths on Sept. 18, 19, 20, 1709 alone (more than an average year; see pic 3). Elder Christof Engmann had died on September 9 together with five other congregational members. Visiting the sick was part of his call. On the final page of the death register completed a century later, the elder wrote: “There have never been as many deaths as during the plague of 1709.”

How was the Mennonite community prepared to deal with such calamities? How did events like these shape the spirituality of the tradition?

The 1709 plague led to a new "tradition" in the Mennonite church in Danzig: “to leave behind bequests for the care of the congregation's poor,” and to organize for their burial. This continued for the next two centuries, according to a later elder (note 12). Both the Frisian and Flemish Mennonites had church buildings immediately outside the city gates (Neugartener Gate and Petershagener Gate respectively), and each also had its own poor house/ hospice under the direction of deacons (note 13). Congregational families reorganized after the death of spouses. In the ten years before the plague, the Danzig Flemish Mennonite Church celebrated on average 13.8 marriages per year; in 1710 they had 42 marriages and 24 in 1711 (see note 11).

A medical report in 1710 records with confidence that the plague came via Thorn, an area further south where Mennonites too had lived since 1586 (note 14).

This 1710 report concludes with formulas for pharmacies, as well as a list of "Dos-and-Don'ts" (see pic). The Danzig doctor warns against buying gimmick cures from drifters or market-criers. He notes too that those who visited many people and also alcoholics were the first to die; particularly harmful was the consumption of "Brandwein," which Mennonites also brewed. "All stench and uncleanliness are very harmful," as well. But the good doctor also adds that staying calm and trusting God is a "great medicine" and recommended to all (note 15).

                ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: This material was written largely in May 2020—after almost two months of “lock-down” because of the global COVID pandemic. A first part was posted in a Mennonite history Facebook Group in May 2, 2020, https://www.facebook.com/groups/MennoniteGenealogyHistory/permalink/3162624093771606/; this was followed by a second part on May 23, 2020, https://www.facebook.com/groups/MennoniteGenealogyHistory/posts/3219394624761219/). A public piece was posted in August in both English and German to address conservative Mennonites (https://trailsofthepast.com/2020/08/07/mennonitesepidemics/). Later in 2020 others began to write about the plagues in Danzig, including Glenn H. Penner, “The Great Plague of 1709,” Preservings 41 (2020), 43-46, https://www.plettfoundation.org/preservings/archive/41, and Kat Hill, “Death and Dreams in a Time of Plague,” Anabaptist Historians, posted October 1, 2020, https://anabaptisthistorians.org/2020/10/01/death-and-dreams-in-a-time-of-plague/.

Note 2: Cornelius Krahn, Dutch Anabaptism: Origin, Spread, Life and Thought, 1450–1600 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1968), 219f., https://archive.org/details/dutchanabaptismo00krah.

Note 3: Maria Bogucka, “Danzig an der Wende zur Neuzeit: Von der aktiven Handelsstadt zum Stapel und Produktionszentrum,” Hansische Geschichtsblätter 102 (1984), 91f., https://www.hansischergeschichtsverein.de/file/hgbll_102_1984.pdf.

Note 4: Cf. Maria Bogucka, “Danzig an der Wende zur Neuzeit,” 95.

Note 5: Maria Bogucka, “Health care and poor relief in Danzig (Gdansk): The sixteenth- and first half of the seventeenth century,” in Health care and poor relief in Protestant Europe, 1500–1700, edited by Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham, 204–219 (New York: Routledge, 1997), 211, https://archive.org/details/healthcarepoorre0000unse/page/204/.  

Note 6: Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence: From Ancient Times to the Present, 3rd ed., edited by George C. Kohn (New York: Infobase, 2007), 87f. https://books.google.ca/books?id=tzRwRmb09rgC&lpg=PA88&vq=DANZIG&dq=danzig%20epidemic%201653&pg=PA87#v=onepage&q&f=false

Note 7: Reinhold Curicken, Stadt Dantzig: Historische Beschreibung (Amsterdam/ Dantzigk: Janssons, 1687), bk. 3, ch. 31. https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb10805961_00011.html.

Note 8: Bogucka, “Health care and poor relief in Danzig (Gdansk),” 211, 206.

Note 9: Anna Brons, Ursprung, Entwickelung und Schicksale der Taufgesinnten oder Mennoniten in kurzen Zügen (Norden, 1884), 258f. https://books.google.ca/books?id=BzU_AAAAYAAJ&pg=PR1#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Note 10 / Pic 1: See Danzig’s weekly plague deaths on pic 1 below (far right column), from Johannes Kanold ed., Einiger Medicorum Send-Schreiben, von der An. 1708 in Preussen, und An. 1709 in Dantzig ... graßireten Pestilentz (Breßlau: Fellgiebel, 1711), 48f. https://archive.org/details/b30545687/page/48/mode/2up.

Note 11: "Records of Prussian Mennonite Churches in the Vistula Delta: Births, Baptisms, Marriages and Deaths in the Danzig Church 1665-1943. Family Books 1 and 2 of the Danzig Mennonite Church." Transliterated and digitized by Ernest H. Baergen, http://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/prussia/Danzig_Records.htm.

Note 12: Hermann G. Mannhardt, Die Danziger Mennonitengemeinde. Ihre Entstehung und ihre Geschichte von 1569–1919 (Danzig, 1919), 87, https://archive.org/details/diedanzigermenno00mannuoft. More generally, cf. Peter J. Klassen, Mennonites in Early Modern Poland and Prussia (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins, 2009).

Note 13: Mannhardt, Danziger Mennonitengemeinde, 104-106.

Note 14: Manasse Stöckel, Anmerckungen, welche bey der Pest, die anno 1709 in Dantzig graßirte, beobachtet wurden (Hamburg, 1710), https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de//resolve/display/bsb10815757.html.

Note 15 / pic 4: Stöckel, Anmerckungen (last page; unnumbered).







  Print Friendly and PDF


Comments

  1. The attack against the ecclesiastical position of the Mennonites by the voivode of Pomerelia took place in 1676 and not in 1667 (see the note 9):

    https://books.google.ca/books?id=BzU_AAAAYAAJ&pg=258#v=twopage&q&f=false

    This can also be found in the "Eine polnische Starostei und ein preussischer Landrathskreis. Geschichte des Schwetzer Kreises 1466-1873", vol. 2 by Hans Maercker published in the magazine "Zeitschrift des Westpreussisschen Geschichtsvereins.", issue 17, Danzig, 1886, page 53:

    https://dlibra.bibliotekaelblaska.pl/Content/49705/PDF/Heft17.pdf

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vaccinations in Chortitza and Molotschna, beginning in 1804

Vaccination lists for Chortitza Mennonite children in 1809 and 1814 were published prior to the COVID-19 pandemic with little curiosity ( note 1 ). However during the 2020-22 pandemic and in a context in which some refused to vaccinate for religious belief, the historic data took on new significance. Ancestors of some of the more conservative Russian Mennonite groups—like the Reinländer or the Bergthalers or the adult children of land delegate Jacob Höppner—were in fact vaccinating their infants and toddlers against small pox over two hundred years ago ( note 2 ). Also before the current pandemic Ukrainian historian Dmytro Myeshkov brought to light other archival materials on Mennonites and vaccination. The material below is my summary and translation of the relevant pages of Myeshkov’s massive 2008 volume on Black Sea German and their Worlds, 1781 to 1871 (German only; note 3 ). Myeshkov confirms that Chortitza was already immunizing its children in 1804 when their District Offic...

"A Small Town near Auschwitz” – Chortitza Mennonite Refugee/ Resettlement Camps

Simple proximity to a place of horrors does not equal knowledge or complicity. Many Gnadenfeld-area Mennonite refugees were, for example, temporarily housed 20 km. away from the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp where 15-year-old Anne Frank died ultimately of typhus ( note 1 ). The day after liberation by British troops on April 15, 1945, camp survivors began to flow through neighbouring villages. “What a sight they were! They had been tortured and starved, and were swollen from lack of food. … We could hardly believe that the glorious country of Germany could commit such crimes against people,” Susanna Toews wrote ( note 2 ). My mother was only seven, but she remembers overhearing shocking descriptions given by their host family’s teenaged girls forced by the British to clean some of the camp buses. What about the much larger death camp at Auschwitz? There is a book entitled: A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust. It is about an administrator living near the ...

“Operation Chortitza” (Part II) – Resettler Camps in Danzig-West Prussia, 1943-44

Waldemar Janzen, my former German professor and advisee, turned eleven years old in 1943. He and his mother and 3,900 others from Chortitza and Rosenthal (Ukraine) were evacuated west to the ethnic German resettler camps in Gau Danzig-West Prussia in October that year (see Part I; note 1 ). Years later Janzen could still recall much from this childhood experience—including the impact of the visit by Professor Benjamin H. Unruh a few weeks after their arrival. “He was a man who had extended much help to his fellow Mennonites ever since they began to emigrate from Russia during the 1920s” ( note 2 ). Unruh was a father-figure to his people, and his arrival at their camp in West Prussia signaled to the evacuees that they were in good hands ( note 3 ). Unruh’s impact on 7,000 other Chortitza District villagers in Upper Silesia would be the same some weeks later ( note 4 ). Surprisingly Unruh’s West Prussian camps visit left an equally indelible impression on the Gau’s Operations Commande...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 4 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends

Irony is used in this post to provoke and invite critical thought; the historical research on the Mennonite experience is accurate and carefully considered. ~ANF Preparing for your next AGM: Mennonite Congregations and Deportations Many U.S. Mennonite pastors voted for Donald Trump, whose signature promise was an immediate start to “the largest deportation operation in American history.” Confirmed this week, President Trump will declare a national emergency and deploy military assets to carry this out. The timing is ideal; in January many Mennonite congregations have their Annual General Meeting (AGM) with opportunity to review and update the bylaws of their constitution. Need help? We have related examples from our tradition, which I offer as a template, together with a few red flags. First, your congregational by-laws.  It is unlikely you have undocumented immigrants in your congregation, but you should flag this. Model: Gustav Reimer, a deacon and notary public from the ...

Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp, 1942: List and Links

Each of the "Commando Dr. Stumpp" village reports written during German occupation of Ukraine 1942 contains a mountain of demographic data, names, dates, occupations, numbers of untimely deaths (revolution, famines, abductions), narratives of life in the 1930s, of repression and liberation, maps, and much more. The reports are critical for telling the story of Mennonites in the Soviet Union before 1942, albeit written with the dynamics of Nazi German rule at play. Reports for some 56 (predominantly) Mennonite villages from the historic Mennonite settlement areas of Chortitza, Sagradovka, Baratow, Schlachtin, Milorodovka, and Borosenko have survived. Unfortunately no village reports from the Molotschna area (known under occupation as “Halbstadt”) have been found. Dr. Karl Stumpp, a prolific chronicler of “Germans abroad,” became well-known to German Mennonites (Prof. Benjamin Unruh/ Dr. Walter Quiring) before the war as the director of the Research Center for Russian Germans...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 1 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends

Irony is used in this post to provoke and invite critical thought; the historical research on the Mennonite experience is accuarte and carefully considered. ~ANF American Mennonite leaders who supported Trump will be responding to the election results in the near future. Sometimes a template or sample conference address helps to formulate one’s own text. To that end I offer the following. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mennonites in Germany sent official greetings by telegram: “The Conference of the East and West Prussian Mennonites meeting today at Tiegenhagen in the Free City of Danzig are deeply grateful for the tremendous uprising ( Erhebung ) that God has given our people ( Volk ) through the vigor and action of [unclear], and promise our cooperation in the construction of our Fatherland, true to the Gospel motto of [our founder Menno Simons], ‘For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.’” ( Note 1 ) Hitler responded in a letter...

1929 Flight of Mennonites to Moscow and Reception in Germany

At the core of the attached video are some thirty photos of Mennonite refugees arriving from Moscow in 1929 which are new archival finds. While some 13,000 had gathered in outskirts of Moscow, with many more attempting the same journey, the Soviet Union only released 3,885 Mennonite "German farmers," together with 1,260 Lutherans, 468 Catholics, 51 Baptists, and 7 Adventists. Some of new photographs are from the first group of 323 refugees who left Moscow on October 29, arriving in Kiel on November 3, 1929. A second group of photos are from the so-called “Swinemünde group,” which left Moscow only a day later. This group however could not be accommodated in the first transport and departed from a different station on October 31. They were however held up in Leningrad for one month as intense diplomatic negotiations between the Soviet Union, Germany and also Canada took place. This second group arrived at the Prussian sea port of Swinemünde on December 2. In the next ten ...

Sesquicentennial: Proclamation of Universal Military Service Manifesto, January 1, 1874

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago Tsar Alexander II proclaimed a new universal military service requirement into law, which—despite the promises of his predecesors—included Russia’s Mennonites. This act fundamentally changed the course of the Russian Mennonite story, and resulted in the emigration of some 17,000 Mennonites. The Russian government’s intentions in this regard were first reported in newspapers in November 1870 ( note 1 ) and later confirmed by Senator Evgenii von Hahn, former President of the Guardianship Committee ( note 2 ). Some Russian Mennonite leaders were soon corresponding with American counterparts on the possibility of mass migration ( note 3 ). Despite painful internal differences in the Mennonite community, between 1871 and Fall 1873 they put up a united front with five joint delegations to St. Petersburg and Yalta to petition for a Mennonite exemption. While the delegations were well received and some options could be discussed with ministers of the Crown, ...

1920s: Those who left and those who stayed behind

The picture below is my grandmother's family in 1928. Some could leave but most stayed behind. In 1928 a small group of some 511 Soviet Mennonites were unexpectedly approved for emigration ( note 1 ). None of the circa 21,000 Mennonites who emigrated from Russia in the 1920s “simply” left. And for everyone who left, at least three more hoped to leave but couldn’t. It is a complex story. Canada only wanted a certain type—young healthy farmers—and not all were transparent about their skills and intentions The Soviet Union wanted to rid itself of a specifically-defined “excess,” and Mennonite leadership knew how to leverage that Estate owners, and Selbstschutz /White Army militia were the first to be helped to leave, because they were deemed as most threatened community members; What role did money play? Thousands paid cash for their tickets; Who made the final decision on group lists, and for which regions? This was not transparent. Exit visa applications were also regularly reje...

Warthegau, Nazism and two 15-year-old Mennonites, 1944

Katharina Esau offered me a home away from home when I was a student in Germany in the 1980s. The Soviet Union released her and her family in 1972. Käthe Heinrichs—her maiden name (b. Aug. 18, 1928)—and my Uncle Walter Bräul were classmates in Gnadenfeld during Nazi occupation of Ukraine, and experienced the Gnadenfeld group “trek” as 15-year-olds together. Before she passed, she wrote her story ( note 1 )—and I had opportunity to interview my uncle. Käthe and Walter both arrived in Warthegau—German annexed Poland—in March 1944 ( note 2 ), and the Reich had a plan for their lives. In February 1944, the Governor of Warthegau ordered the Hitler Youth (HJ) organization to “care for Black Sea German youth” ( note 3 ). Youth were examined for the Hitler Youth, but also for suitability for elite tracks like the one-year Landjahr (farm year and service) program. The highly politicized training of the Landjahr was available for young people in Hitler Youth and its counterpart the League of G...