Values
Values: FAITH
Mennonites are Christians who practice Anabaptism, and follow a literal interpretation of the Bible and the guidance of Dutch theologian Mennon Simons (1496–1561). Faith has always been fundamental for them, defining their identity and governing their society and relationship with the surrounding world. It was this very desire to live in accordance with religious beliefs that brought the first Mennonites to Poland in the sixteenth century.
Engagement of a Mennonite. Graphic work by Daniel Chodowiecki from the second half of the eighteenth century. Source: Copernican Library in Toruń.
Confession of faith of Mennonites living in Prussia from 1781. Source: Copernican Library in Toruń.
Mennonites living on the banks of the Vistula were sometimes referred to as ‘nowochrzczeńcy’ (anabaptists), which underlined the fact that they rejected infant baptism. This stems from the fact that Mennon Simons’ followers believe that only a person baptised fully consciously, at the earliest on the threshold of adulthood, subjected to the so-called ‘believer’s baptism’ can be a true member of the religious community. Polish Mennonites appreciated the significance of this event and gave it a festive nature. A baptism candidate had to declare their faith and fidelity to the community, and renounce sin. They were then baptised according to the tradition of the commune they joined. In Żuławy and in the lower Vistula valley, baptism was performed by sprinkling or pouring water from a vessel. Only some Mennonites living in Mazovia started practising baptism by total immersion in water in the nineteenth century.
The Mennonites also saw wars and armed violence as contrary to the teachings of Christ, so for a long time they refused military service. This radical view was one of the reasons why they were charged with extraordinary taxes and denied full burgher and civil rights. This problem became particularly acute during the partitions. Already at the end of the eighteenth century, the policies of the militaristic Kingdom of Prussia caused thousands of Mennonites to emigrate from Prussia to Russia. When the exemption of Mennonites from military service was finally abolished in the nineteenth century in both those countries, hundreds more Mennonite families left what used to be Poland for America. The migration’s massive scale made the tsar rescind his decision and allow the Mennonites to provide alternative service by working in his forests instead. Meanwhile, in Prussia, Mennonites living in Żuławy and on the Vistula managed to secure the possibility of enlisting for non-combatant units. However, over the years, they learned to fully accept military duty for the state, thus departing from the principles for which their ancestors were ready to give their lives.
For religious reasons, Mennonites also refused to swear oaths. In practice, this rule made it impossible for them to hold offices and functions requiring one. This fit in well with the Mennonite conviction that it is necessary to lead a quiet and ascetic life among their own community.
Hans von Steen, elder of the Flemish Mennonite community in Gdańsk (germ. Danzig), in 1754–1781. Source: Copernican Library in Toruń.
Fragment of the oath taken by the Mennonites in Elbląg (germ. Elbing) in 1642. Sorce: State Archives in Gdańsk. Photograph by Ł. Kępski.
A distinguishing feature of the Mennonite religious life was the lack of clergy and hierarchical church structures. The faithful living in an area formed a democratic community headed by a board of several people elected by all the community’s members. The aforementioned board was presided over by an ‘elder’, whom the Vistula Mennonites called ‘uncle’ (Ohme). He was the community’s spiritual leader and could conduct worship services, baptise, and preach. The community board also included deacons responsible for helping those in need and preachers. Among the latter, it was only in the middle of the nineteenth century that people with a theological education appeared.
Post-Mennonite church in Mątawy (germ. Montau). Photograph by M. Targowski.
The congregation’s board watched over the morality of its members, admonishing them for minor sins and punishing larger ones by way of absolute exclusion from the community. Those entering into a marriage with partners of another religion were also expelled. In the relatively rare cases of conversion of Lutherans or Catholics to Mennonitism, the congregation’s board required them to repeat their baptism and renounce their ties with the previous environment. All these practices aimed to protect the Mennonite communities from an alien environment, which they perceived as a threat to their own traditions, faith, and identity.
Mennonite Church in Gdańsk (germ. Danzig) in 1829 Source: Mennonite Library and Archives Bethel.
The Mennonites living in Poland were not a homogeneous group. Already in the sixteenth century they were divided into two groups, Frisian and Flemish, which differed in some details in their celebrations of services and had a different attitude to relations with the outside world. These differences lost significance in the nineteenth century, giving way to new ones, related to abandoned or intensified religious radicalism, which led to, for example, the establishment of the Mennonite Fraternal Church (Mennoniten Brüdergemeinde) structures in Mazovia.
Mennonite cemetery in Sosnówka (germ. Schönsee). Photograph by M. Targowski.
Values: WORK
Cornelius Dyck’s farm in Junoszyno (germ. Junkeracker) in 1937. Source: Mennonite Library and Archives Bethel College.
Conscientious and meticulous work was one of the key Mennonite values, regardless of their profession. It was this hard-working nature that gained them recognition and a promise of tolerance from the Polish rulers and administrators of the lands they had been settling since the sixteenth century.
Most Mennonites in Poland lived in rural areas and engaged in agricultural activities. Order was always a distinguishing feature of Mennonite farms and their proper functioning required significant involvement of the owners. A significant portion of the Mennonites living in the villages in Żuławy and in the areas located in the lower and middle reaches of the Vistula River were farmers growing crops, and raising dairy cattle and horses at the same time. They sold their products, including Dutch yellow cheeses and butter, renowned for their quality, in nearby towns, or in Poland’s largest urban centre at that time–the port of Gdańsk.
Fragment of a plan of Wielka Nieszawka (germ. Groß Nessau), inhabited by Mennonites, from 1803. Source: Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz Berlin.
The conditions in which the Mennonites lived in villages on the Vistula River and in the entire Żuławy area forced them to be persistent and diligent in harnessing water. Thanks to the experience and skills gained in the Netherlands, they were true experts in draining wetlands using a network of drainage canals and ditches, sluices and devices for pumping excess water when dealing with the aftermath of floods and thaws. Together with others living in the lowlands, they maintained safety of old flood embankments, ones built in the times of the Teutonic Knights. They also erected new sections, which provided protection for, among others, Mennonite settlements between Chełmno and Grudziądz.
Mennonite farm near Toruń (germ. Thorn) at the end of the nineteenth century. Source: Copernican Library in Toruń.
Vistula flood embankment, photograph by M. Targowski.
Not all Mennonites owned farms. Members of this faith living in the countryside also included poorer people, who earned their keep by working as hired workers for wealthier families. They were also hired for tasks important for the entire community, such as cleaning and deepening ditches, making roads on dikes (so-called ‘tryfta’, a small path) or reinforcing embankments. Small craftsmen were also among the inhabitants of Mennonite villages. This group mostly comprised poor weavers and tailors, but exceptional specialists also existed, such as the Kroegers from Leśniewo, who manufactured the famous Żuławy wall clocks.
Advertisement of Machandel vodka produced in Nowy Dwór Gdański (germ. Tiegenhof) by the Mennonite Stobbe family, early twentieth century. University Library in Toruń.
Mennonites living in urban environments took up various professions. One of them was haberdashery, i.e. the production of small clothing decorations–belts, braids, tassels, and tapes. This was a particular speciality of Mennonites living in the suburbs of Gdańsk and Elbląg between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Their presence and competitiveness were a thorn in the flesh of the local townspeople, who made it difficult for Mennonites to practice their craft. In this situation, some Mennonite families started producing and selling strong alcohols. Ambrosius Vermeulen gained widespread renown. He founded the ‘Pod Łososiem (Under the Salmon)’ distillery in Gdańsk in 1598, which is where the production of the famous Gdańsk vodka with gold flakes, ‘Goldwasser’, started. ‘Machandel’, an alcoholic beverage produced in the Heinrich Stobbe distillery in Nowy Dwór Gdański from the middle of the preceding century, gained worldwide fame in the nineteenth century. Another Mennonite, Antoni Momber, founded the first café in Gdańsk in 1700.
Biała Karczma (White Tavern) in Michale (germ. Michelau) in the early nineteenth century. Source: Online auctions.
Mennonite ancestry is also attributed to some famous artists and builders active in Gdańsk in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They include Antoni van Oppberghen, the architect of the Gdańsk Old Town Hall, as well as Wilhelm, Abraham and Isaac van den Blocke, and engineer Adam Wiebe. Mennonites in Gdańsk also included merchants and financiers.
With the changes taking place in the nineteenth century, some of the Vistula Mennonites started taking up new jobs. In the countryside, farms quickly switched over to new types of crops, and the production of vegetables and fruit. In the towns, barriers hindering development of Mennonite entrepreneurship were removed. Heinrich Penner, an industrialist from Grudziądz, who owned shoe factories and shops located in, among others, Grudziądz and Toruń, as well as a restaurant in Michale, was one of those to take advantage of this. Careers, especially those which required leaving the local community, sometimes caused Mennonites to abandon their religious traditions and assimilate with the new environment.
Values: SOLIDARITY
Mennonites lived in small communities, in which solidarity and responsibility for the congregation played an important role. Concern for all its members resulted from religious reasons, but it was spurred on by the challenges awaiting in the world, which were easier to face together.
From the moment Mennonites came to Poland, they followed a ‘one for all, all for one’ principle. It was written in the oldest contracts, based on which newcomers from the Netherlands received long-term leases of wetlands in Żuławy and the Lower Vistula area. Upon signing such an agreement, the settlers–personally free and equal–formed a self-governing community called a ‘neighbourhood’, in which they all bore burdens related to rent payments and taxes required of them jointly and proportionally to their wealth. The same applied to the costs of maintaining flood embankments and the network of drainage ditches. If a resident was unable to meet their obligations, all the neighbours took them upon themselves, so as not to put the entire community at risk. The rules organising the rural commune upon the settlement of the first Mennonites, along with the guaranteed rights of the settlers, began to be called ‘Dutch law’ (‘Olender law’ in Polish) as early as in the sixteenth century. In the following decades, they were also used to create ‘Olender’ settlements established with newcomers of other denominations.
Former Mennonite church in Mała Nieszawka (germ. Klein Nessau). Source: Copernican Library in Toruń.
Driven by group solidarity and the desire to help those least fortunate, the Mennonites living on the Vistula River started their first ‘fire cooperatives’ in the first half of the seventeenth century. These resembled group fire insurance covering the inhabitants of several villages. Under this system, any farmer who suffered severe damage due to a fire, could count on organised help from all the other neighbours, who contributed money, raw materials, and anything needed to rebuild their household. Already in 1634, such rules were adopted by the Mennonites living in Żuławy, and in the second half of the seventeenth century they were introduced by those living in the vicinity of Grudziądz. Sometimes support for those affected by floods, other disasters or wars was organised in an analogous way. This unique insurance system worked so well that other communities, ones with no Mennonite presence, also started to introduce it in the eighteenth century.
Fire union of Mennonite villages from the vicinity of Grudziądz (germ. Graudenz) from 1645. Source: State Archives in Gdańsk.
Shelter for the sick and the poor at the Mennonite Church in Gdańsk (germ. Danzig). Source: Copernican Library in Toruń.
The followers of Menno Simons doctrine paid particular attention to helping the most unfortunate. Many locations they inhabited featured ‘houses of the poor’, which were maintained by the entire neighbourhood. This is where the poorest and ailing members of the Mennonite community could find a space for themselves.
Letter from Mennonites living in the vicinity of Toruń (germ. Thorn) dated 1736, in which they ask their confreres in the Netherlands for support after enduring flood damage. Source: Gemeentearchief Amsterdam.
When in really dire need, the Vistula Mennonites could count on help from their fellows living outside the immediate area. Already in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Mennonite communes in the Netherlands and in German countries held collections to help Mennonites living in Poland. These financed, among others, aid for a group of Mennonites settled in the vicinity of Sztum, who were expelled from the Tylża and Klaipėda area in 1724, provided support for families suffering from the greatest floods, as well as high fee payments guaranteeing tolerance on the part of Catholic bishops during the Counter-Reformation. The 1898 church in Mała Nieszawka still stands proof to this Mennonite solidarity. Its construction, after a sudden conflagration of the previous place of worship, was financed from donations of Mennonite communities in Europe and America.
Remains of the Mennonite community archive in Gdańsk (germ. Danzig), saved by American Mennonites from the Mennonite Central Committee in 1945. Source: Mennonite Library and Archives Bethel College.
The tradition of helping people in need was taken by the Vistula Mennonites to new places where they settled as a result of emigration in the 19th and 20th centuries. After 1945, Mennonite charities engaged in the reconstruction of Poland from the war damage. Mennonites from many countries around the world also provided humanitarian aid to Poles during the martial law period and the economic crisis of the last years of communist rule in Poland.