Former Moravian Brethren in Norden (East Friesland)

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Church service hall of the Moravian community in the north around 1800
It was located on the 1st floor of the Hotel Heeren-Logement , Am Markt 49

The history of the former Moravian Brethren in Norden (East Frisia) goes back to the reign of the last East Frisian prince Carl Edzard (1734–1744). Its dissolution took place on February 13, 1898 by resolution of the remaining parishioners. Those on the west side of the Norder preferred marketplace Moravian Chapel went to the early 20th century the property of the Evangelical Reformed parish north-Lütetsburg over. It was demolished in 1970 and replaced by a new reformed community center.

history

Colony of the Zeister Brethren
Mennonite pastor Johannes Deknatel (copper engraving by Cornelis van Noorde)

The first followers of the Moravian Movement can be found in the north as early as 1738. The northern city chronicler Ufke Cremer suspected that they were craftsmen from Zeist in the Netherlands and Switzerland . While there was no Moravian community in Switzerland at that time, a Moravian community was established in s'Heerendijk near IJsselstein as early as 1736. It was the first European Brethren outside of Herrnhut and served the missionaries as a so-called "post office" and as a stopover on the way overseas. From 1745 this function was taken over by the newly founded Brethren in Zeist, only 25 kilometers away, to which the members of the s'Heerendijk colony moved in stages until 1760. In the first decades there were lively connections between the Moravians in the north and in Zeist. For example, in the spring of 1755, Norder's “friends and brothers” went on the arduous journey to Zeist, which was difficult at the time , to spend several weeks there with Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf , who had returned from England and the founder of the Moravian Movement.

The Mennonite preacher Johannes Deknatel played an important role in the Herrnhuter beginnings in the north . Born in Norder, he was assistant preacher from 1720 and five years later a preacher in the Mennonite congregation in Amsterdam. In 1736 he and Zinzendorf met there. It led to Deknatel opening up to Herrnhuter theology without giving up his basic Mennonite beliefs. The end of the 1730s he set up in the house of his living in northern sister, a widowed Blaupot, a home group one, from which worship 1742 regular meetings developed. The place of worship was a rented hall in the Hotel Heeren-Logement . It was located at Am Markt 49 (today: parish office) and could be purchased by the Brethren in 1776. In 1748 the Herrnhuter Kreis was constituted as a partnership and from 1757 - combined with the introduction of its first preacher on May 7th, 1757 - as the northern municipality . The latter date was considered the official foundation day of their congregation by the Norder Herrnhutern. This is also confirmed by a memorial plaque, which was originally located in the Moravian Chapel and can now be viewed in the old town hall , the Norder Heimatmuseum.

During the so-called “first Prussian period” (1744–1807), community life was able to develop free of state repression, which is probably due to the special privileges that the Kingdom of Prussia had granted the Moravians. The establishment of a separate school can even be documented for 1773. In the letters published by Christian Gottlieb Frohberger about Herrnhut and the Protestant Brethren , it says: “To the north in East Friesland there is also a small Brethren that has its public meeting house and holds its worship there in undisturbed freedom.” In the contemporary descriptions of places and travel guides the Norder Herrnhuter mentioned on an equal footing with the other churches and the Jewish synagogue community. For example, in Baedeker's Handbook for Travelers it says: "Five Christian congregations of different confessions, including Mennonites and Moravians, live here together with an Israelite congregation peacefully side by side."

In May 1848, the Moravian municipality made the premises of its community center Am Markt 48 available to a “knitting, sewing and spinning school for needy girls” twice a week . This social institution was supported by the Norder Frauenverein , to which only the wives of leading Norder personalities belonged as members. From 1858 Peta van Hülst, wife of the Mennonite preacher Laurenz van Hülst , held the office of president.

In the early 1860s, the Moravian community sold part of their property to the city of Norden. The former Hotel Heeren-Logement was demolished and the so-called market school was built in its place . It replaced the Lutheran class school at the Ludgeri Church , which had become considerably too small, and served as an elementary school for children from the southern and southwestern part of the city for almost 100 years . Today the Norder Haus des Handwerks is located in its place . In the following years, the Moravians built a small chapel on the property next door ( Am Markt 48 ), which was handed over to its intended use on November 7, 1876. It was a simple, towerless church in the neo-Romanesque style. After the old Norderneyer Inselkirche was demolished in 1878, its organ was moved north by Arnold Rohlfs from 1842. The building served the Moravians as a place of worship for only a little more than two decades. On February 13, 1898, the Herrnhut municipality north dissolved itself through a municipal resolution. In 1905 the chapel became the property of the Evangelical Reformed Parish of Norden-Lütetsburg and served them for around 65 years as a municipal branch of their church, located far away from the north of the city center. The regional church community also used the former Moravian Chapel as guests for their weekly community hours. The last service took place on August 2, 1970. In the early 1970s, it was torn down and replaced by a two-story low-rise building, today's reformed parish hall at Am Markt 48 .

Preacher of the borough north

In the Moravian Unitätsarchiv existing files is a list of 17 ministers ( public workers , public servants ), who served from 1757 to 1898 the city Common north as pastors and preachers. Among them was the primarily as a hymn writer known Carl Bernhard Garve (1763-1841) and the Jung-Stilling -Vertraute Johann Gottlieb Erxleben (1762-1818).

overview

As far as their place of birth was concerned, the North Preachers did not only come from the German states. Among them are clergymen of Moravian , Danish , Swiss and even Greenlandic origins. Not all of them accepted the preaching office in North with enthusiasm. The community helper Friedrich Christian Cunow (1751–1829) wrote in his autobiography: “In 1780 I was called to work as a worker and preacher of the community to the north in East Friesland, which request I stupidly, feeling my poverty and weakness, but in confidence to the Lord, whose strength is mighty in the weak, joyfully received from His hand. ”For other clergy, practical considerations played a role in their entry into service in the north. Christian August Stegmann (1732–1809), for example, wanted to spare his “ailing” wife an arduous overland trip to Amsterdam, where he was actually called. The University Elders Conference then proposed to swap places of work with the aforementioned preacher Cunow. In contrast to Amsterdam, the trip to the north for the Stegmann couple could “mostly be made on water”.

List of preachers

From to Surname Biographical Notes
1761 1770 Heinrich Nitschmann Nitschmann was born on September 15, 1712 in Kunewalde (Moravia), he died on July 4, 1770 in Niesky .
1770 1780 Heinrich Georg Gerner Gerner was born on October 6, 1717 in Viborg (Jutland), he died on March 13, 1800 in Christiansfeld .
1780 1783 Christian Friedrich Cunow Cunow was born on February 15, 1751 in Niesky , where he also died on March 5, 1829.
1783 1790 Christian August Stegmann Stegmann was born on September 29, 1732 in Halle ; he died on December 27, 1809 in Niesky .
1790 1791 Johann Ulrich Willy Willy was born on August 14, 1732 in Thusis ( Graubünden ) and died on June 6, 1815 in Ebersdorf (Thuringia). Because of his health, he asked for his recall from the north after a year.
1791 1793 Lorenz Wilhadus Fabricius Fabricius was born on July 17, 1760 in Humptrup . After his brief service in the north, he was a preacher for the Moravian Brethren in Berlin and Zeist . In 1810 he was elected by the synod to the church leadership of the Brethren and ordained bishop in 1814. He died while still serving in the church administration on March 17, 1840 in Berthelsdorf .
1793 1797 Christian Gotthelf Icke
1797 1799 Johann Gottlieb Erxleben Erxleben was born in 1762 and died in 1818. He had extensive correspondence with Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling .
1799 1801 Johann Hermann Philipp Hammerich
1801 1801 Carl Bernhard Garve Garve was born in Jeinsen in 1763 . He died in Herrnhut on 1841 . He was best known as a hymn poet. - From 1809 Garves made a second stay in the north.
1801 1809 Johannes Nielsen
1809 1810 Carl Bernhard Garve In the summer of 1810 Garve moved to the Moravian municipality in Berlin.
1811 1836 Jakob Friedrich Plessing Plessing initiated edifying gatherings in Leer in 1812 , which took place until around 1819.
1837 1850 Samuel Brunner Brunner was born on March 19, 1782 in Oberkulm , Switzerland. After serving as a missionary for the Brothers' Unity in Antigua and Barbados (1821–1835), he was called north in 1837, retired in Herrnhut in 1850 and died there on June 21, 1853.
1852 1856 Johannes Ernst Mentzel
1856 1874 Heinrich Bernhard Schopmann
1875 1896 Ferdinand Conrad Ludwig Maasberg
1896 1898 Wilhelm Heinrich Fürstenberg

Effects

The number of members in the Moravian Municipality of Norden was seldom more than 30, but in the almost 160 years of its existence it has played an important role for the economy of the East Frisian town and for church life in East Frisia. It brought “capable tradesmen and desirable craftsmen” of Dutch and Swiss origin to the north. This included tanners , soap makers , Roßmüller , brewers , watchmakers , tailors and shoemakers as well as dealers and merchants.

When looking at the small circle of members, the large circle of friends of the Moravian Movement should not be overlooked. The friends remained members of their ancestral churches, but met in various places in East Frisia for private edifying meetings and were shaped in their faith and life by the piety of Moravian. An example of this is the aforementioned Mennonite preacher Johannes Deknatel. In addition to the work of the Moravian missionaries, it was above all the literature work and the rich sacred songs of the Moravian people that brought people into contact with the Brethren. In addition, “the activity of the Moravians in the field of external mission” also had a fruitful effect on the regional church communities in East Friesland and their associations. Both the East Frisian Mission Society for Senfkorn, founded in 1798, and the East Frisian Evangelical Mission Society were not insignificantly influenced by the Moravians. The first yearbooks of these societies contain extensive accounts of the missionary work of the Brethren in Greenland, Labrador , the West Indies , Suriname, and among the Indians in the United States . Collections that were put together in the Lutheran and Reformed parishes of East Frisia for this missionary work were forwarded through the preacher of the Moravian Congregation in the north according to their purpose.

Even the German Baptists , whose first congregation was founded in Hamburg in 1834, were not unaffected by the Moravian piety and in their early days recruited some formative personalities from the circles of the Brethren. This includes Gottfried Wilhelm Lehmann , who, alongside Johann Gerhard Oncken and Julius Köbner, is one of the founding fathers of German Baptism. Already in his youth, some of which he spent as an apprentice saddler in Leer, East Frisia, he came under the influence of the Moravian Movement. He belonged to a convent of young men and attended the domestic edification meetings already mentioned. In his notebook there are a number of names from the circle of friends and members of the Brethren, including that of the aforementioned northern preacher Jakob Friedrich Plessing. Lehmann met his future Baptist Johann Gerhard Oncken in Berlin in 1830 through the mediation of mutual friends from the East Frisian Moravian community. While Oncken was responsible for the Calvinist character of the then young Baptist movement, Lehmann brought in his Moravian views, the traces of which can still be seen today.

literature

  • Hajo van Lengen: Ostfriesland: History and shape of a cultural landscape , Aurich 1995, p. 220
  • Menno Smid: Ostfriesische Kirchengeschichte , Volume VI in the series Ostfriesland im Schutz des Deiches , Pewsum 1974, pp. 533-534
  • Ufke Cremer: Norden im Wandel der Zeiten (published on behalf of the city of Norden for the 700th anniversary), Norden 1955, p. 71; 80; 98

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ufke Cremer: Norden im Wandel der Zeiten (published on behalf of the city of Norden for the 700th anniversary), Norden 1955, p. 80.
  2. ^ Gisela Mettele: Weltbürgertum or Gottesreich: The Moravian Brethren as a global community 1727-1857 , Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-525-36844-2 , p. 46.
  3. ^ Jacob Wilhelm Verbeek: Des Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf life and character in brief presentation , Gnadau 1845, p. 313 ( online ).
  4. ↑ On the Mennonite-Herrnhuter relationship see Astrid von Schlachta : "We do not want to deal with religious disputes". Terms and concepts in the Herrnhut-Hutterischen relationship . In: Mennonite history sheets 62/2005. Pp. 51-76
  5. ↑ For Deknatels biography see Samme Zijlstra: Jimme (Joannes) Deknatel .
  6. ^ According to written information from Mr. Olaf Nippe, Unitätsarchiv Herrnhut (February 19, 2014).
  7. ^ Gerhard Canzler: The Norder Schools , Weener 2005, ISBN 3-88761-097-0 , p. 121.
  8. ^ Menno Smid: Ostfriesische Kirchengeschichte , Volume VI in the series Ostfriesland in the protection of the dike , Pewsum 1974, p. 533.
  9. ↑ JS Verlag, JG Gruber (Ed.): General Encyclopedia of Sciences and Arts edited in alphabetical order by the authors mentioned , 13. Theil, Leipzig 1824, p. 178 ( Die Brüder-Unität ), Sp. II.
  10. ↑ Ufke Cremer: Norden im Wandel der Zeiten (published on behalf of the city of Norden for the 700th anniversary), Norden 1955, p. 80.
  11. ↑ Christian Gottlieb Frohberger: Letters about Herrnhut and the Evangelical Brethren together with an appendix , Budissin (Bautzen) o. J., p. 17 ( online ).
  12. ^ Karl Baedeker: Germany and Austria. Handbook for travelers , Coblenz 1869, p. 83 ( online ).
  13. ↑ Gerhard Canzler: The Norder Schools , Weener 2005, p. 88, column II.
  14. ^ Gerhard Canzler: The Norder Schools , Weener 2005, ISBN 3-88761-097-0 , p. 121, column I.
  15. ^ Menno Smid: Ostfriesische Kirchengeschichte , Volume VI in the series Ostfriesland in the protection of the dike , Pewsum 1974, p. 534.
  16. ^ Based on written information from Mr. Olaf Nippe (Unitätsarchiv Herrnhut) on February 19, 2014
  17. ↑ Gerhard Schwinge: Jung-Stilling as author of edification of the awakening: a literary and piety-historical study of his periodical writings 1795-1816 and their environment , Göttingen 1994, ISBN 3-525-55816-3 , p. 22 (see also note 43)
  18. ↑ CE Genft: news from the Brethren congregation , Volume 12, Gnadau 1830, p 787 ( online )
  19. ↑ Christoph Ernst Senft: News from the Brethren , Gnadau 1861 (43rd year), p. 63 ( online )
  20. ^ Curriculum vitae of Johann Ulrich Willy, Unitätsarchiv Herrnhut, signature: R.22.26.30
  21. ↑ Fabricius's curriculum vitae in the Herrnhut University Archive, signature: R.22.37.21
  22. ^ Karl Goedeke: From world peace to the French revolution in 1830. Poetry of general education . Section VI of the 8th volume of the series Grundriss zur Geschichte der Deutschenographie. From the sources . Dresden 1938. p. 412
  23. ↑ Hans Luckey : Gottfried Wilhelm Lehmann and the emergence of a German free church , Kassel undated (1939?), P. 22f
  24. ↑ Ufke Cremer: North through the ages. Published on behalf of the city of Norden for the 700th anniversary , Norden 1955, p. 80
  25. ↑ See Werner Schröder: Georg Siegmund Stracke (PDF file).
  26. ^ Menno Smid: Ostfriesische Kirchengeschichte , Volume VI in the series Ostfriesland in the protection of the dike , Pewsum 1974, p. 534
  27. ^ Hans Luckey: Gottfried Wilhelm Lehmann and the emergence of a German free church , Kassel 1939, p. 12f
  28. ^ Lehmann's baptism took place on May 13, 1837; Hans Luckey: Gottfried Wilhelm Lehmann and the emergence of a German free church , Kassel 1939, p. 65; 67
  29. ↑ See in detail Günter Balders : Die Deutschen Baptisten und der Herrnhuter Pietismus , in: Freikirchenforschung 3/1993, pp. 26–39