Mennonite Church Gdansk

The Gdańsk Mennonite Church is now used by a Pentecostal congregation

The Mennonite Church in Gdansk dates from 1819. Like other Mennonite churches, it was designed as a simple preaching church . There is no altar or larger pictorial decorations.

In the immediate vicinity of the church there was also a Mennonite poor house, a cemetery and a hospital. In 1884 a pastorate was added. After the eviction in 1953, the church became a meeting place for a Polish Pentecostal congregation .

history

The first Anabaptists came to the Hanseatic city from the Netherlands probably as early as 1530 . Even before the Reformation , there had been intensive trade contacts between the Netherlands and Gdansk. The strong ties between Mennonites in the Hanseatic city and particularly in Amsterdam continued well into the 18th century. One of the first preachers of the congregation was the Leeuwarden theologian and co-founder of the Mennonites, Dirk Philips . It was not until 1750 that standard German was introduced as the language of preaching.

As in other places, a Flemish (around 1569) and a smaller Frisian community (around 1600) also formed in Danzig. The Frisian community built the first church in 1638. The Flemish community followed ten years later. Both churches were still outside the city walls . At the beginning, the Flemish community also included Mennonite settlers in Danzig Werder , who only formed their own community from 1791. In 1800 the Gdańsk Mennonites were granted civil rights for the first time . After the church of the Frisian congregation was demolished under Napoleon in 1806, the two Mennonite congregations were unified in 1808 and the church on Mennonite Street was finally rebuilt in 1819. With 1020 baptized members (1940), the community was one of the largest in Eastern Germany. After the Second World War, parts of the library were looted, other parts were transported to North America with the help of American Mennonites. The early church registers of the Danzig community are now in the Mennonite Research Center on the Weierhof in the Palatinate. After the expulsion, many Mennonites from Gdańsk emigrated to Canada .