Alexander Mack

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Alexander Mack (born July 27, 1679 in Schriesheim , † January 19, 1735 in Germantown , Pennsylvania , USA ) is the founder of the Schwarzenau Brethren and radical Pietism .

Life

Alexander Mack was born into a wealthy miller family. His father Johann Philipp Mack (1636–1706) was a member of the Schriesheim council and was a member of the presbytery of the Reformed church there. Alexander Mack learned the miller's trade and on January 18, 1701 married Anna Margaretha Kling, whose father was also a member of the Schriesheim Council and the Reformed Presbytery. The Mack couple had two sons, Alexander Mack jun. after the death of his father in 1735 took over the leadership of the later Church of the Brethren . In 1702 Alexander Mack sen. Together with his brother Hans Jakob Mack, he handed over his parents' mill.

The sale of his inheritance in 1706 marked a decisive turning point in the life of Alexander Mack. In the same year, the radical Pietist itinerant preacher Ernst Christoph Hochmann von Hochenau visited the Palatinate and Schriesheim quickly developed into a center of radical Pietism. Alexander Mack made his mill available to the radical Pietists for their conventicle , but this soon brought him into conflict with the local authorities. Mack finally left Schriesheim to avoid imprisonment by the secular authorities and fled to Zuzenhausen to live with an Anabaptist who lived there , together with Hochmann von Hochenau, his companion Christian Erb and other like-minded people . When they later came to Mannheim , they were arrested and, after interrogation, deported. The radical pietist movement in the Palatinate continued to grow despite the persecution measures.

Eder

Mack sold other parts of his property and found acceptance in the county of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Hohenstein , one of the most important places of refuge for radical Pietists. Here he belonged to a group that was intensively discussing the legality of the church's baptismal practice. Two “brothers” encouraged them to believe that they would be baptized by immersing themselves three times in flowing water. Probably between August 1st and August 11th 1708 the baptism of the first people from this circle took place. Lot determined the first Baptist, who baptized Alexander Mack by immersing himself three times in the name of the Triune God in the Eder . Alexander Mack then baptized the other seven baptized persons. The baptism carried out in this way in the Eder is still considered the founding moment of the Anabaptist-Pietist movement now known as Tunker .

This formation of the congregation led to an intensive discussion within the radical pietist movement about the necessity of baptism. The majority of the figures of radical Pietism, who were more influenced by mystical spiritualism , rejected the path of the Schwarzenau new baptists.

In 1711 the New Baptist movement spread to the Wetterau . The New Baptists left the Wetterau in 1715 and found acceptance in Krefeld , where Mennonites had been tolerated for a long time. Due to their strong missionary appearance, however, they came into conflict with the authorities. In 1719, 20 families from the Krefeld community emigrated to Pennsylvania and settled in the Germantown settlement previously founded by German emigrants from Krefeld .

The mother community in Schwarzenau also came under increasing pressure from 1719 onwards. And so 40 families from the municipality left the Wittgensteiner Land and first emigrated to Surhuisterveen in the Dutch province of Friesland . In 1729 most of them emigrated to North America under the leadership of Alexander Mack. More new baptizers followed in the 1730s. After 1740 the trail of the remaining new baptists in Germany is lost. They appear to have either joined the Mennonites or continued to live as ecclesiastical separatists.

Works by Alexander Mack

  • Short and simple imagination / of the express / but holy rights and ordinances of the house of GOD / as commanded by the true house father JEsus Christ / and left in writing in his will. Presented in a conversation / between father and son through question and answer. o. O. 1715.
  • Eberhard Ludwig Gruber's basic research questions, which were presented to the new Anabaptists in Witgenstein, in particular, to be answered, including: attached short and simple answers to the same, previously given in writing by a sincere member of the Witgenstein community, and now on request, publicly Pressure promoted. Germantown 1774.

literature

  • Donald F. Durnbaugh (Ed.): The Church of the Brethren. Past and present. The Churches of the World, Vol. IX. Stuttgart 1971.
  • Ulf Lückel: Church discipline and ban. 300 years of Schwarzenau new baptists. In: Siegerländer Heimatkalender 84 (2009), pp. 119–128.
  • Marcus Meier:  Mack, Alexander. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 20, Bautz, Nordhausen 2002, ISBN 3-88309-091-3 , Sp. 962-967.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Marcus Meier: The Schwarzenau new baptists. Genesis of a church formation between Pietism and Anabaptism. AGP 53. Göttingen 2008.
  • Hans Schneider: The radical Pietism in the 18th century. In: History of Pietism. Vol. 2. Göttingen 1995. pp. 107-197.
  • Gernot G. Lorsong: Taufe uns, Alexander , Info Verlagsgesellschaft Karlsruhe, 1990, ISBN 3-88 190-108-6 .
  • Elke Meinecke / Günter Fillbrunn: About an American church of Schriesheim origin. In: Schriesheimer Jahrbuch 1998 , 1998, ISSN  1434-5579
  • Ulf Lückel: nobility and piety. The Berleburg Counts and Pietism in their territories. Vorländer Verlag, Siegen 2016.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ulf Lückel: Nobility and piety. The Berleburg Counts and Pietism in their territories. Vorländer Verlag, Siegen 2016, pp. 65–69.
personal data
SURNAME Mack, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American Christian innovator
DATE OF BIRTH July 27, 1679
PLACE OF BIRTH Schriesheim
DATE OF DEATH January 19, 1735
Place of death Germantown , Pennsylvania, USA