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

Swiss and Palatinate Connections

Sometime after 1850 Andreas Plennert and his family immigrated to South Russia from the Culm Region of West Prussia. Though there was at least one Mennonite “Plehnert” who had already immigrated to Russia in 1793, it is not a very common Prussian-Russian Mennonite name. As such, however, it is easier to trace than many and offers a minority narrative and identity within the longer and broader Russian Mennonite story. The account below is adapted largely from information in Horst Penner, Die ost- und westpreußischen Mennoniten , vol. 1, though I have expanded upon his work to offer a slightly different narrative. In 1724 there was a group of Mennonites forced out of the Memel region in East Prussia for political and religious reasons and were given assistance to resettle back to West Prussia in areas populated by Mennonites. Among the 23 households that went to the Stuhm region there is one Plenert listed, namely Christian Plenert. We know that Mennonites entered the Memel region ...

Catherine the Great’s 1763 Manifesto

“We must swarm our vast wastelands with people. I do not think that in order to achieve this it would be useful to compel our non-Christians to accept our faith--polygamy for example, is even more useful for the multiplication of the population. … "Russia does not have enough inhabitants, …but still possesses a large expanse of land, which is neither inhabited nor cultivated. … The fields that could nourish the whole nation, barely feeds one family..." – Catherine II (Note 1 ) “We perceive, among other things, that a considerable number of regions are still uncultivated which could easily and advantageously be made available for productive use of population and settlement. Most of the lands hold hidden in their depth an inexhaustible wealth of all kinds of precious ores and metals, and because they are well provided with forests, rivers and lakes, and located close to the sea for purpose of trade, they are also most convenient for the development and growth of many kinds ...

Quiet in the Land: Peter Fast, 1932-2010

My father Peter Fast passed away in January 2010. The years have given me many opportunities to reflect on his life and impact. He was a gentle and good person--and could work like horse. He was born into poverty in 1932 in Paraguay. His parents were pioneers, first in Fernheim and then (1937) in Friesland. He liked to tell me that he ate manioc root for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was never sure if that was true, and it didn’t help to convince me to eat things I didn’t like. His mother died when he was fourteen; the basic medical aid she needed was out of reach. His new step-mother was a complex person who made life difficult for him and others. Dad only finished the 6th grade in Friesland. He was more than happy to get off the school bench and onto a horse. I don’t think I ever saw him write a complete sentence in my life, whether in English or in German. He had no interest in history, let alone reading—though over time he read the local city paper. Nothing I’ve written on...

Snapshots of Danzig Mennonites, late 1600s & early 1700s

A picture can be worth a thousand words. We do not have photographs, but we have a few colour paintings of life in and around Danzig in the late 1600s and early 1700s, as well as maps. We also have a limited number of "textual snapshots" of Mennonites at this time and place, which offer an instructive window into that foreign world. These snapshots of work, worship, health, education, community relationships, smaller repressions, and security can contribute to the creation of a larger collage of Mennonite life in Danzig and Polish Prussia. Snapshot 1 : In 1681 there were approximately 180 Mennonite families who lived in the “gardens” or villages outside Danzig, with 113 of those families within the jurisdiction of the city. At this time Mennonites were barred from owning houses within the walls of the city. Of these 113 family heads, we know: 43 were retailers of spirits, 24 merchants, 9 lacemakers, 7 dyers, 3 silk dyers, 3 pressers, 2 brokers, 2 treasurers, 2 waitresses, et...

Mennonites in Danzig's Suburbs: Maps and Illustrations

Mennonites first settled in the Danzig suburb of Schottland (lit: "Scotland"; “Stare-Szkoty”; also “Alt-Schottland”) in the mid-1500s. “Danzig” is the oldest and most important Mennonite congregation in Prussia. Menno Simons visited Schottland and Dirk Phillips was its first elder and lived here for a time. Two centuries later the number of families from the suburbs of Danzig that immigrated to Russia was not large: Stolzenberg 5, Schidlitz 3, Alt-Schottland 2, Ohra 1, Langfuhr 1, Emaus 1, Nobel 1, and Krampetz 2 ( map 1 ). However most Russian Mennonites had at least some connection to the Danzig church—whether Frisian or Flemish—if not in the 1700s, then in 1600s. Map 2 is from 1615; a larger number of Mennonites had been in Schottland at this point for more than four decades. Its buildings are not rural but look very Dutch urban/suburban in style. These were weavers, merchants and craftsmen, and since the 17th century they lived side-by-side with a larger number of Jews a...

"They are useful to the state." An almost forgotten Prussian view of Mennonites, ca. 1780s-90s

In 1787 Mennonite interest for emigration was extremely strong outside the quasi independent City of Danzig in the Prussian annexed Marienwerder and Elbing regions. Even before the land scouts Johann Bartsch and Jacob Höppner had returned from Russia later that year, so many Mennonite exit applications had flooded offices that officials wrote Berlin in August 1787 for direction ( note 1a ). Initially officials did not see a problem: because Mennonites do not provide soldiers, the cantons lose nothing by their departure, and in fact benefit from the ten-percent tax imposed on financial assets leaving the state. Ludwig von Baczko (1756-1823), Professor of History at the Artillery Academy in Königsberg, East Prussia, was the general editor of a series that included a travelogue through Prussia written by a certain Karl Ephraim Nanke. Nanke had no special love for Mennonites, but was generally balanced in his judgements and based his now almost forgotten account of Mennonites on perso...

The Politics of Map-Making: A "Mennonite Map"

Maps are political artifacts. Russia or Ukraine? A late nineteenth-century map of “German Settlements and Presence throughout History” offers a good example from the Mennonite settlements ( note 1 ). It was based on the German Colonial Atlas of Paul Langhans ( note 2 ). Langhans was the most important mapmaker and promoter of German settlements around the globe; he continued this work of “pan-Germanism” well into the Nazi era ( note 3 ). Already in the nineteenth century, more than one Russian journalist claimed that Russian Germans—including Mennonites in Russia—promoted pan-Germanism in their schools and spread hatred against Russia ( note 4 ). The consequences on the ground were harsh: Johannes H. Janzen—a geography instructor in the Mennonite high school in Ohrloff—who was known “to love the Russian people and Fatherland more than most of his contemporaries,” was placed under “serious suspicion of treason” for an instructional map ( note 5 ) he made of the Molotschna Mennoni...

Mennonite-Designed Mosque on the Molotschna

The “Peter J. Braun Archive" is a mammoth 78 reel microfilm collection of Russian Mennonite materials from 1803 to 1920 -- and largely still untapped by researchers ( note 1 ). In the files of Philipp Wiebe, son-in-law and heir to Johann Cornies, is a blueprint for a mosque ( pic ) as well as another file entitled “Akkerman Mosque Construction Accounts, 1850-1859” ( note 2 ). The Molotschna Mennonites were settlers on traditional Nogai lands; their Nogai neighbours were a nomadic, Muslim Tartar group. In 1825, Cornies wrote a significant anthropological report on the Nogai at the request of the Guardianship Committee, based largely on his engagements with these neighbours on Molotschna’s southern border ( note 3 ). Building upon these experiences and relationships, in 1835 Cornies founded the Nogai agricultural colony “Akkerman” outside the southern border of the Molotschna Colony. Akkerman was a projection of Cornies’ ideal Mennonite village outlined in exacting detail, with un...

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...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog