The Danzig Mennonite Church: Its Origin and History from 1569-1919 - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

This volume was originally published in 1919 in Germany for two reasons. One was the desire to reflect on three hundred fifty years of congregational history, going all the way back to the initial leadership provided by Dirk Philips, one of Menno Simons' most important co-workers. Celebrating the centennial of the congregation's church building, which stands to this day in Gdańsk, Poland, was the second reason. The author, Hermann Gottlieb Mannhardt, served the congregation as pastor from 1878 to 1927 and was an important leader of the German Mennonite church. The wide-ranging congregational history he wrote places the Mennonite community of Danzig/Gdansk in its broader context as a religious minority that faced persistent discrimination in early modern and modern Germany and as a vibrant urban congregation in the midst of a large rural Mennonite community. Mannhardt's account is important to Mennonite history for bridging the gap from the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century to the larger and better-researched Mennonite communities of Russia founded in the late 1700s by the Mennonites of the Vistula Delta region. This volume also reminds contemporary urban Mennonites that some Mennonites have always lived in cities.

Special features of this translation include an epilogue by Pastor Tomasz Ropiejko, lead pastor of the Pentecostal congregation that has used the former Mennonite church building in Gdańsk since the 1950s. His account updates the history of the building and relates the struggles the congregation faced to reclaim this building for worship. Original maps make the streets and villages of Mannhardt's account easy to locate. Editorial annotations to the original text explain passages that might otherwise remain obscure and highlight as well the places where Mannhardt's nineteenth-century perspectives shaped his interpretations.

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