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 also barred from living within the safety of the city gates. Both were under the jurisdiction of the Catholic bishop, who also profited from e.g., Mennonite competition with the guilds of Danzig. A small monastery was also constructed around this time between Schottland and the city walls. In the neighbouring hamlet of Nobis the local pub is noted (Der Nobis Krug).

Illustration 3, with the Bischofs-Berg (Bishop's Mount) in the background right, is from the early 1600s. The first literary product of the Danzig Mennonite congregation was from this period—a handsome reprint of a Dutch Bible, known as the "Scottish" (Schottländische) Bible of 1598.

Illustration 3b, 1617, shows a world of activity in and around Schottland and neighbouring Petershagen, and also the quarrying of the Bishop's Mount.

Illustration 4 offers a beautiful view of Schottland looking out from the Danzig city walls, mid-1600s. It appears to be a prosperous community. We know that wealthier members of the Danzig congregation (mostly living in Schottland) sent their young adult children to Amsterdam to complete their education, learn a business, and receive catechetical instruction and baptism.

In 1648 the Flemish Mennonites were given permission by the city to build a church building—its front likely indistinguishable from a house—and hospice. To that point most of its members lived in Schottland. The Frisians were able to purchase land for their meeting place in 1638.

In 1656 Schottland was razed by the city as a precaution in the war with Sweden (Curicken, 368), but by 1681 some 180 Mennonite families were living in suburbs of Danzig again (Mannhardt, 105; H. Penner II, 41).

The 1709 plague took some 24,533 lives in and around Danzig. The small Flemish Mennonite congregation centred in Schottland lost 154 members and 141 younger adherents. The "Lehn Diary" notes that 146 Mennonites were buried in the Schottland fields; 223 individuals were buried in Hoppenbrug, immediatelybehind Schottland; Jews in Schottland buried 94 of their own; 185 Catholics were buried in the Jesuit cemetery behind Schottland; 364 plague deaths were recorded in neighbouring Petershagen, and 2,063 in Ohra.

Map 5 jumps ahead 80 years to 1734, just prior to the siege of the city by the Russians. Again, it shows the prosperity and urban density of Schottland, Ohra, Langfuhr, and Stolzenberg where Mennonites were living.

Map 6: 1740; depicts in deep red the destroyed buildings of Schottland after the Russian siege in 1734. By the 1760s Schottland is completely rebuilt; illustration 6b offers another beautiful view of the village from the "Lege" or "New" Gate into the city.

After 1800 Mennonites were permitted to become citizens and moved increasingly into the city.

Map 7 and Map 8, 1807, show the nicely rebuilt and vibrant Mennonite communities just prior to the siege of Danzig by the French.

Illustration 8b depicts the intensity of the French bombardment of the city and generally how the suburbs were razed in advance. Danzig soldiers dismantled and destroyed all buildings within 800 paces of the city walls, which included the Frisian Mennonite church building in Neugarten and their hospice. The larger Flemish Mennonite church and its new organ and hospice were not destroyed, but were set aflame in 1815 in an attack on the city by Russian forces. In 1808 after two centuries of division, the congregations had merged (the division however continued in Russia).

Map 9: by 1822, Mennonite life in Alt-Schottland had come to an end. Alt Schottland, Ohra, Stolzenberg are labelled as burnt out and "lying in ruins“ after the French siege in 1807.

Illustration 10, ca. 1890s, is a photograph of the Danzig Mennonite Church and parsonage under the Bishop's Mount.

There are other maps and other depictions of life in Danzig, especially from the mid-1600s (see source for illustration 4). Danzig was a large, wealthy, beautiful and strategically important city. Proud citizens, friends and foes alike had reasons to map it out! Fortunately these artefacts also help us to piece together a little bit of Mennonite life "in the suburbs."

---Text by Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Sources and Links---

Map 1: From Karl Stumpp, “Karte der Siedlungen in Danzig-Westpreußen, aus denen Mennoniten in den Jahren 1789–1807 nach Rußland ausgewandert sind,” in idem, The emigration from Germany to Russia in the years 1763 to 1862 (Lincoln, NB: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1973), appendix, https://archive.org/details/emigrationfromge00stum/page/1039/mode/1up.

Map 2: “1615 inset” of an 1815 map of Danzig, http://maps.mapywig.org/m/City_plans/Central_Europe/Situations_Plan_von_der_Stadt_und_Festung_Danzig_1815_Rolle_30L.jpg?fbclid=IwAR2ao8i3XlZ3vMsDRW93EVfQTvYdh_AA0dwIwXFHHwiLz5kHjlqzLOwEug4.

Illustration 3: ca. 1600, https://gdansk.fotopolska.eu/1716151,foto.html?s=0.72&cx=3642&cy=1805.

Illustration 3b, 1617, https://www.loc.gov/item/2021670734.

Illustration 4: mid-1600s, from Reinhold Curicken, Der Stadt Dantzig: Historische Beschreibung (Amsterdam/ Dantzigk: Janssons, 1687), 32 [63], https://pbc.gda.pl/dlibra/publication/61987/edition/55645/content.

Map 5: 1734, https://gdansk.fotopolska.eu/Gdansk/b25605,Mapy_i_plany,72,48.html?f=780245-foto.

Map 6a: 1740, https://gdansk.fotopolska.eu/367411,foto.html.

Map 6b: 1760-1764, https://download.cloudgdansk.pl/gdansk-pl/t/202206191744.jpg.

Map 7: 1807, https://gdansk.fotopolska.eu/717711,foto.html?s=1&cx=4291&cy=1904.

Map 8: 1807, https://gdansk.fotopolska.eu/Gdansk/b25605,Mapy_i_plany,72,48.html?f=780245-foto.

Illustration 8b: 1807, https://gdansk.fotopolska.eu/Gdansk/b33823,Panoramy_Gdanska,24,48.html.

Map 9: 1822, https://gdansk.fotopolska.eu/Gdansk/b25605,Mapy_i_plany,120,48.html?f=672473-foto.

Illustration 10: 1890s, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Danzig_Mennonite_Church_(Gdansk,_Poland)#/media/File:Gdansk_mennonici_02_137.jpg.

---References for Further Reading---

“Jesuiten in Danzig,” https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesuiten_in_Danzig.

Klassen, Peter J. A Homeland for Strangers. An Introduction to Mennonites in Poland and Prussia. Rev’d ed. Fresno, CA: Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies, 1989. https://archive.org/details/ahomeland-for-strangers-an-introduction-to-mennonites-in-poland-and-prussia-revised-ocr.

———. Mennonites in Early Modern Poland and Prussia. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.

Lehn, Waldemar Henry, ed. “Lehn Diary.” Transliteration from the gothic script and translation, 2010. From Mennonite Heritage Archives, Winnipeg, MB.

Mannhardt, Hermann G. Die Danziger Mennonitengemeinde. Ihre Entstehung und ihre Geschichte von 1569–1919. Danzig, 1919. https://archive.org/details/diedanzigermenno00mannuoft.

———. "Danzig Mennonite Church (Gdansk, Poland)." https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Danzig_Mennonite_Church_(Gdansk,_Poland).

Penner, Horst. Die ost- und westpreußischen Mennoniten in ihrem religiösen und sozialen Leben in ihren kulturellen und wirtschaftlichen Leistungen. Teil 2, 1772–bis zur Gegenwart. Kirchheimbolanden: Self-published, 1987.

“Stare-Szkoty (Alt-Schottland),” https://www.gdansk.pl/turystyka-w-gdansku/wielokulturowa-tozsamosc-miasta-gdanska/stare-szkoty,a,223126.

Comments

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...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog