Preservings $20 No. 25, December, 2005 - Home at Plett Foundation

harmony. As city architect, he worked on the
city’s wall fortifications and incorporated many
beautiful gates into the earthen walls. 18 Van Obbergen
also built a new armory, one of Danzig’s
most impressive Renaissance monuments. Not
surprisingly, his fame brought him invitations
from other cities and countries, but he chose to
devote most of his time to Danzig, his adopted
home where he died in 1611.
Danzig’s dependence on Dutch expertise
continued. Early in the 17 th century, Adrian
Oldbrantsen and Wilm Jansen Bennigen, both
from Alkmaar, came to rechannel the Mottlau
River and build a lock where the river entered the
city. 19 Another Dutch engineer, Cornelis van dem
Bosch designed fortifications for the right side of
the stream. 20 Then, when Danzig was threatened
during the Polish-Swedish war in the 1620s,
the city decided to strengthen its fortifications.
Again, a Dutch engineer, Peter Jansen de Weert,
came to ring the city with a wall and numerous
bastions. De Weert died before he could finish his
assignment; once more, the city fathers turned
to an expert from the Netherlands. This time the
Mennonite Adam Wiebe from Harlingen, who
had earlier come to develop a water system for the
city center, continued the building of the earthen
walls and bastions. In the process he developed
a suspended cable-car system to transport earth
from a nearby hill to the new walls. 21
Such interaction between the Netherlands
and Danzig seemed to extend to virtually all
aspects of life. By 1600, the city was alive with
the activity of reportedly 3,150 guild masters,
many of whom came from or had learned their
skill in the Netherlands. 22 Sometimes, Mennonites
introduced new trades. In one instance,
the new immigrants introduced the making of
exquisite trimming such as gold and silver lace
and braid. Polish nobles and urban patricians
provided a ready market for what soon became
a flourishing industry. It is interesting to note
that after this industry became well-established,
Danzig guilds tried to create a monopoly which
would exclude the Dutch Mennonites and their
descendants from a craft they had introduced. In
the ensuing Bortenmacher (lace-makers) quarrel,
Danzig guilds asked the city council to stop the
Netherlanders from “snatching the bread from
the mouths of [Danzig’s] citizens.” 23 When
their formal protests failed to sway both the city
council and the judiciary, some members of the
general populace launched a pamphlet attack
on the Mennonites, and accused them of being
nothing more than the remnants of the Anabaptists
who had been followers of Jan of Leyden,
a revolutionary who gained control of the German
city of Münster during the reformation.
Mennonites were now described as weeds that
were being protected and cultivated by the city
council. 24 For decades, the city council rejected
the demands of the guilds and the pressures of
pamphleteers, but eventually the king intervened.
In a significant departure from past royal policy,
King Augustus III in 1750 issued a decree imposing
new financial obligations on Mennonites
and barring masters from teaching the skill of
making braid and lace to any Mennonite boy. 25
A few years later, Gottfried Lengnich, syndic
of Danzig, deplored this irony: those who had
introduced a specialty into the city were now
barred from practicing it. 26 Even then, however,
more than two centuries after Mennonites had
begun leaving the Netherlands to find a new
home in Royal Prussia, it was the intercession of
the Dutch that brought forth some justice. On the
urging of Dutch Mennonite congregations, the
government of the Netherlands appealed directly
to the Danzig city council. The Dutch commissioner
there, Dirk van Bleyswyck, successfully
urged the council to take action to ameliorate
unjust treatment of the Mennonites. 27
The Dutch-Danzig ties also included development
of social and cultural institutions. When
Danzig decided to explore new avenues in treatment
of crime, it looked to Amsterdam. There the
Rasphuis, a prison for men and boys, provided a
setting where they could learn a skill while incarcerated,
thus demonstrating Dutch experimentation
in social engineering seeking to combine
retribution with rehabilitation. A similar facility,
the Spinhuis, was later constructed for girls and
women so they could learn trades associated with
spinning wool. These institutions became models
for Danzig and patterned a code of regulations
after the one developed in Amsterdam. 28
The scope of Dutch influence in Danzig and
environs in economic, social, civic and cultural
arenas was significant indeed. In virtually all of
them, Mennonites played a role, even if sometimes
a small one. But for those Mennonites who
left the Netherlands to seek a new home along
the Vistula, it was the religious ties that long
remained central. For Mennonite congregations
in the Vistula Delta and along the Vistula River,
ties between the two regions remained strong
throughout the existence of Royal Prussia. It is
thus not surprising that when Frederick seized
most of Royal Prussia in 1772, then also Danzig
in 1793, there was considerable misgiving in the
Mennonite community.
Sometimes religious dissension expressed
itself in rather extreme forms. In 1739, a group
of 24 members of one of the Danzig churches
sent a letter to the Netherlands, asking that a
minister be sent to celebrate the Lord’s Supper,
since the Danzig minister, Ältester Hendrik van
Duren, had unilaterally decided to exclude all
men wearing wigs. 29 It should be noted that this
practice had also created problems in Dutch
Mennonite congregations, but the more tolerant
and pragmatic Netherlanders concluded that
wearing wigs might be a matter of maintaining
one’s health, and should thus not be prohibited. 30
In Danzig, however, the dispute became so heated
that some members of the congregation asked
the Senate of the city to intervene. The response
affirmed the autonomy of the congregation: no
minister could unilaterally exclude anyone from
communion unless the congregation formally
adopted such a prohibition. 31 Subsequently, some
members of the Danzig congregation sent another
This church, built in 1768, situated in the village of Baerwalde (now Niedzwiedzica), served the Fuerstenwerder
congregation. The building has since burned down. (P. J. Klassen, A Homeland for Strangers, the fourth
page past 47)
letter to the Amsterdam Mennonites, asking them
to send an Ältester who would be able to install a
new Ältester in Danzig; Johann Donner had been
chosen for this office, 32 but he died before action
could be taken. 33 Eventually, Jacob Ouwejans,
a minister from the Netherlands, succeeded in
restoring unity, and on October 2, 1740, a united
congregation observed communion.
Social ties between the Netherlands and immigrants
from there to the Danzig region also
remained strong. Marriages frequently involved
partners from both regions. Records show that
in the 17 th century, at least 145 brides and 601
bridegrooms from Danzig came to Amsterdam
to marry their partners. 34 Unfortunately, the
documents do not always list the religious affiliation
of the participants. At the same time,
the association between the terms “Dutch” and
“Mennonite” must have been close; one historian
contends that in Royal Prussia the two were
often regarded as synonymous. 35 A contemporary
Lutheran historian, not sympathetic to the
Mennonites, noted that many Netherlanders
Preservings No. 25, December 2005 - 45