Jews and Mennonites Together in Danzig's Suburbs

There has been very little reflection on the relationship of Jews and Mennonites in the suburb of Schottland (or Alt-Schottland or Stare Szkoty) where Mennonites first settled in the mid-1500s. Here Mennonites and Jews lived in the small community together for two centuries, quite literally on the margins outside the gates of the city of Danzig.

Many historic maps that include Alt Schottland have become available in recent years (note 1; pic). H.G. Mannhardt’s book on the Danzig Mennonite church community plus some archival membership lists are our best sources for the Mennonite experience, while illustrations from the day bring many of those episodes of prosperity, repressions, war, plague, emigration, flooding etc. in an urban environment to life (note 2). Peter J. Klassen’s writings on Mennonites in Poland and Prussia also present newer research on Mennonite life in and around Danzig in helpful ways (note 3).

There is one small sentence in Klassen’s larger volume that suggests an angle for further study: “The king’s ordinance also imposed restrictions and prohibitions on Jews” (note 4). In this connection “The Lehn Family Diary” notes during the 1709 Danzig plague that "94 Jews from Schottland were buried here,” and in and around the city of Danzig “it is said to be 24,533” (note 5).

Some of the literature on Jews around the city identifies Schottland as one of the “Jewish surburbs” of Danzig. A 1764/65 census records 504 Jews in Alt-Schottland (including Hoppenbruch), and another 230 in Langfuhr, where Mennonites also lived in larger numbers (note 6; see map pic). In the comprehensive 1772 census, there are 584 Jews living in Alt-Schottland--which is higher than the Mennonites with 41 families (notes 7 and 2).

Two descriptive essays of Jewish life in Schottland offer many and multiple parallels to the Mennonite experience in the same village; both minority group were barred from citizenship, property ownership, commerce and worship within the city gates of Danzig (note 8).

Jews in Schottland shared with Mennonite--as immediate neighbours—plagues and pestilence, war and flooding, the razing of their houses, and multiple, recurring threats of expulsion. Like Mennonites, Jews had to pay large sums (including regular bribes and protection money) for the right to live and do commerce and pursue their trades and religious life adjacent to but outside the city. Jewish history of Alt-Schottland writes about this as if it happened exclusively to Jews; Mennonites have largely done the same in our own storytelling.

Both Jewish and Mennonites in Alt-Schottland were prosperous, separated communities but living together, with their own places of worship, their own customs and dress. Both had their own poorhouses /hospices, and both shared similar strategies for survival on the margins. Both had strong ties to their respective co-religionists in western Europe and hosted many guests. By all accounts members of both religious communities in Alt-Schottland thrived financially—that is, until a war or some strong edict was directed against them.

The history of both groups would benefit from the attempt to craft a common story and narrative of life in the suburb of Alt-Schottland. That has not yet been done, but it appears to be increasingly possible and necessary especially post-Holocaust.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: See previous post (forthcoming).

Note 2: Cf. Hermann G. Mannhardt, Die Danziger Mennonitengemeinde. Ihre Entstehung und ihre Geschichte von 1569–1919 (Danzig, 1919), https://archive.org/details/diedanzigermenno00mannuoft. There are 41 Mennonite families in Alt-Schottland in the 1772 census, when the areas around Danzig come under control of Prussia: https://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/prussia/1776MasterV7byVillage.pdf; see other sources: https://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/prussia/.

Note 3: Peter J. Klassen, A Homeland for Strangers. An Introduction to Mennonites in Poland and Prussia, rev’d ed. (Fresno, CA: Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies, 1989), 11-15, https://archive.org/details/ahomeland-for-strangers-an-introduction-to-mennonites-in-poland-and-prussia-revised-ocr; idem, Mennonites in Early Modern Poland and Prussia (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 48-62.

Note 4: Klassen, Mennonites in Early Modern Poland and Prussia, 58.

Note 5: Waldemar Henry Lehn, editor and translator, “Lehn Diary,” 2010. From Mennonite Historical Archives, Winnipeg, MB.

Note 6: Judith Kalik, Scepter of Judah: The Jewish Autonomy in the Eighteenth-century Crown Poland (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 51, https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Scepter_of_Judah/1fGQfpMdp84C?hl.

Note 7: Zenon Nowak, “A Brief History of the Jews in Royal Prussia,” in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 7: Jewish Life in Nazi-Occupied Warsaw, edited by Antony Polonsky, 3-11 (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2008), 8, https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Polin_Studies_in_Polish_Jewry_Volume_7/Hm1vEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=szkoty&pg=PA8&printsec=frontcover.

Note 8: See especially Slawomir Koscielak, "The Issue of Synagoge at Stare Szkoty near Gdansk of the year 1701: Situation of the Jews in Royal Prussia before the arrival of the Evangelical Missionaries from Halle," Jewish History Quarterly 44, no. 4 (2006), 586-591, https://cbj.jhi.pl/documents/1040939/101/; AND Samuel Echt, Die Geschichte der Juden in Danzig (Leer/Ostfriesland: Rautenberg, 1972), 16-34, https://archive.org/details/diegeschichteder0000echt/page/16/mode/2up. Also: Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/danzig-gda-324-sk-poland-jewish-history-tour.

Comments

Invitation to the Russian Consulate, Danzig, January 19, 1788

B elow is one of the most important original Mennonite artifacts I have seen. It concerns January 19. The two land scouts Jacob Höppner and Johann Bartsch had returned to Danzig from Russia on November 10, 1787 with the Russian Immigration Agent, Georg von Trappe. Soon thereafter, Trappe had copies of the royal decree and agreement (Gnadenbrief) printed for distribution in the Flemish and Frisian Mennonite congregations in Danzig and other locations, dated December 29, 1787 ( see pic ; note 1 ). After the flyer was handed out to congregants in Danzig after worship on January 13, 1788, city councilors made the most bitter accusations against church elders for allowing Trappe and the Russian Consulate to do this; something similar had happened before ( note 2 ). In the flyer Trappe boasted that land scouts Höppner and Bartsch met not only with Gregory Potemkin, Catherine the Great’s vice-regent and administrator of New Russia, but also with “the Most Gracious Russian Monarch” herse...

Why study and write about Russian Mennonite history?

David G. Rempel’s credentials as an historian of the Russian Mennonite story are impeccable—he was a mentor to James Urry in the 1980s, for example, which says it all. In 1974 Rempel wrote an article on Mennonite historical work for an issue of the Mennonite Quarterly Review commemorating the arrival of Russian Mennonites to North America 100 years earlier ( note 1). In one section of the essay Rempel reflected on Mennonites’ general “lack of interest in their history,” and why they were so “exceedingly slow” in reflecting on their historic development in Russia with so little scholarly rigour. Rempel noted that he was not alone in this observation; some prominent Mennonites of his generation who had noted the same pointed an “extreme spirit of individualism” among Mennonites in Russia; the absence of Mennonite “authoritative voices,” both in and outside the church; the “relative indifference” of Mennonites to the past; “intellectual laziness” among many who do not wish to be distu...

The Tinkelstein Family of Chortitza-Rosenthal (Ukraine)

Chortitza was the first Mennonite settlement in "New Russia" (later Ukraine), est. 1789. The last Mennonites left in 1943 ( note 1 ). During the Stalin years in Ukraine (after 1928), marriage with Jewish neighbours—especially among better educated Mennonites in cities—had become somewhat more common. When the Germans arrived mid-August 1941, however, it meant certain death for the Jewish partner and usually for the children of those marriages. A family friend, Peter Harder, died in 2022 at age 96. Peter was born in Osterwick to a teacher and grew up in Chortitza. As a 16-year-old in 1942, Peter was compelled by occupying German forces to participate in the war effort. Ukrainians and Russians (prisoners of war?) were used by the Germans to rebuild the massive dam at Einlage near Zaporizhzhia, and Peter was engaged as a translator. In the next year he changed focus and started teachers college, which included significant Nazi indoctrination. In 2017 I interviewed Peter Ha...

"Between Monarchs" a lot can happen (like revolt). A Mennonite "Accession" Prayer for the Monarch

It is surprising for many to learn that Russian Mennonites sang the Russian national anthem "God save the Tsar" in special worship services ... frequently! We have a "Mennonite prayer" and sermon sample for the accession of the monarch ( Thronbesteigung ) or its anniversary, with closing prayer-- and another Mennonite sampler of a coronation ( Krönung ) prayer, sermon and closing prayer ( note 1 ). After 70 years with one monarch, the manual is made for a time like this--try sharing it with your Canadian Mennonite pastor ;) Technically there is no “between” monarchs: “The Queen is Dead. Long live the King!” But there is much that happens or can happen before the coronation of the new monarch. Including revolt. Mennonites in Molotschna had hosted Tsar Alexander I shortly before his death in 1825. Upon his death in December, Alexander's brother and heir Constantine declined succession, and prior to the coronation of the next brother Nicholas, some 3,000 rebel (mos...

Mennonite Literacy in Polish-Prussia

At a Mennonite wedding in Deutsch Kazun in 1833 (pic), neither groom nor bride nor the witnesses could sign the wedding register. A Görtz, a Janzen, a Schröder—born a Görtzen – illiterate. “This act was read to the married couple and witnesses, but not signed because they were unable to write.” Similarly, with the certification of a Mennonite death in Culm (Chelmo), West Prussia, 1813-14: “This document was read and it was signed by us because the witnesses were illiterate.” Spouse and children were unable to read or write. Names like Gerz, Plenert, Kliewer, Kasper, Buller and others. 14 families of the 25 Mennonite deaths registered --or 56%--could not sign the paperwork ( note 1 ; pic ). This appears to be an anomaly. We know some pioneers to Russia were well educated. The letters of the land-scout to Russia, Johann Bartsch to his wife back home (1786-87) are eloquent, beautifully written and indicate a high level of literacy ( note 2 ). Even Klaas Reimer (b. 1770), the founder t...

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...

1871: "Mennonite Tough Luck"

In 1868, a delegation of Prussian Mennonite elders met with Prussian Crown Prince Frederick in Berlin. The topic was universal conscription--now also for Mennonites. They were informed that “what has happened here is coming soon to Russia as well” ( note 1 ). In Berlin the secret was already out. Three years later this political cartoon appeared in a satirical Berlin newspaper. It captures the predicament of Russian Mennonites (some enticed in recent decades from Prussia), with the announcement of a new policy of compulsory, universal military service. “‘Out of the frying pan and into the fire—or: Mennonite tough luck.’ The Mennonites, who immigrated to Russia in order to avoid becoming soldiers in Prussia, are now subject to newly introduced compulsory military service.” ( Note 2 ) The man caught in between looks more like a Prussian than Russian Mennonite—but that’s beside the point. With the “Great Reforms” of the 1860s (including emancipation of serfs) the fundamentals were c...

Four-Part Singing in Mennonite Schools and Church in Russia

The significance of singing instruction may seem trite, but it became a key vehicle in the Mennonite school curriculum for fostering a basic appreciation of the arts and for faith formation. In Johann Cornies’ circulated guidelines for teachers, singing was recommended as a means “to stimulate and enliven pious feelings” in the children—a guideline he copied directly from a German Catholic pedagogue and circulated freely under his own name ( note 1 ). On January 26, 1846 Cornies distributed a curriculum regulation to all schools that mandated “singing by numbers ( Zahlen ) from the church hymnal” ( note 2 ). Attention to singing instruction in the schools precipitated significant and controversial changes in Mennonite liturgy. An 1854 visiting observer to the Bergthal Colony—a Chortitza daughter colony outside of Cornies’ purview—wrote: “Endlessly long hymns from the Gesangbuch (hymnal) were begun by the Vorsänger (song leader) of the congregation, and sung with so many flo...

Becoming German: Ludendorff Festivals in Molotschna, 1918

During the friendly German military occupation of Ukraine at the end of WWI, patriotic “Ludendorff Festivals” were encouraged by German forces to raise funds to support injured German soldiers. A first such festival in the Molotschna was held on June 25, 1918 in Ohrloff, and was attended by “a great many German officers, soldiers and colonists with music, [patriotic] speeches and social interaction” From the perspective of the German army press, the event was “extremely enjoyable;” it was accompanied with music by a 30-piece regiment orchestra, and beer, sausage, sandwiches, ice-cream, raspberries and cherries were sold. It closed with a “small dance,” raising 7,387 rubles or 9,850 German marks in donations ( note 1 ). Later that summer, a Ludendorff Festival in Halbstadt began with Sunday worship, followed by an early concert, games and performances by the Selbstschutz , as well as “entertainment and merriment of every kind,” with short plays and dancing into the morning ( note ...

Flight from Flanders to Friesland

In the latter half of the sixteenth century Protestantism gradually spread throughout the northern Netherlands in the form of Calvinism—which had a direct impact on Anabaptists. When the Northern Provinces of the Netherlands led by the exiled Protestant Prince William of Orange went to war against Spain in 1568, persecution of Anabaptists in Catholic Flanders increased again. Long before the Protestant Northern Provinces would declare independence in 1581, the inquisition against Anabaptists in Bruges, for example, had achieved its goal. With the last two Anabaptist executions in the city in 1573, the once large and thriving Mennonite congregation was extinguished. Subsequently Mennonites lived in Bruges only on rare occasions, and when present, for only a short time, as for example the well-known art historian Karel van Mander in 1582 ( note 1 ). In the Northern Provinces Calvinism had become attractive theologically and politically. Not only was Christian resistance to tyrannical gov...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog