Preservings $20 Issue No. 26, 2006 - Home at Plett Foundation

practice actually prevailed,
such as the Frisian reliance on
strong hierarchical leadership,
as opposed to the Flemish congregational
model.
A more helpful clue to
discover whether one’s congregational
tradition came
from the Flemish or Frisian
churches is through the study of
the backgrounds of congregations
themselves. Mennonites
in Prussia tended to settle
according to alliances. The
Great Marienburger Werder
was largely Flemish in settlement,
with the congregations of
Heubuden, Rosenort, Fürstenwerder,
Tiegenhagen and Ladekopp
all characterized as
Flemish. Only Orlofferfelde in
the central Werder was Frisian
in allegiance. In other areas,
such as in the small Marienburger
Werder, across the Nogat
river, the Frisian side was
stronger, with congregations at
Thiensdorf and Markushof.
Of the early emigrants to
Russia, most came from the
Great Werder, hence the strong
Flemish affiliation. Nevertheless,
emigrants who had come
from Frisian churches were
also present in both the colonies of Chortitza
and Molotschna. Only the daughter colony
Bergthal was purposefully settled by just Flemish
Church members, largely in order to avoid
the religious controversies that had occurred
in settling Chortitza almost two generations
earlier.
Questions of Ethnic Origins: Flemish or
Frisian?
This question is probably more difficult to
answer than the first. There can be no doubt
that the division itself was largely fueled by the
differences between the two cultures. And even
where the schism was exported to other regions,
cultural differences remained for some time,
which would possibly imply that the separation
actually was an ethnic one. For example, in the
Great Marienburger Werder, evidence seems
to point to the fact that the Frisians and Flemish
actually were following different linguistic
traditions until the late eighteenth century. The
Flemish congregations only began to abandon
Dutch in their church services in the 1760s and
1770s. In contrast, already in 1678 elders and
ministers of the neighbouring Orlofferfelde
(Frisian) congregation sent a letter of request
for aid to the Mennonites in Amsterdam, which
was written in High German, 16 suggesting that
they did not have the linguistic capacity to write
in the Dutch language.
Nevertheless, it appears as though the ethnic
origins of the two groups were much more fluid
than one would suspect from the names. Already
when the division began, elder Dirk Philips
Hans Knevel, a clothsheaer in Antwerp, being imprisoned, 1572. Credit: Martyrs’ Mirror, 7 th ed. 946.
referred to the sides as Frisian and Flemish “as
they are called”, suggesting that perhaps even
then the division was not totally ethnic. Philips,
himself a Frisian, sided with the Flemish, who
in Danzig considered him their first elder!
Through the years, family names have
continued to defy the contention that the one
group was Flemish in origin, the other Frisian.
For example, a study of family names of elders
and ministers in two Prussian Flemish congregations
(Fürstenwerder and Heubuden) in
1857, shows that only three (Regier, Dyck, and
Zimmermann) of the eleven family names represented
had probable Flemish origins. The others
suggest roots from Holland (Claassen, Wall),
Germany (Wiens, Penner), native West Prussian
(Reimer), and even Frisian (Epp, Töws, Wiebe).
In total, of the 24 people identified as leaders in
these two Flemish congregations, only a quarter
had Flemish family names, while fifteen percent
actually had probable Frisian origins! 17 And
while this can by no means be seen as an exact
science, it shows the difficulty of linking ethnic
origin to Frisian or Flemish congregational
roots. To give two more examples, the Flemish
name Quiring was already represented in the
Frisian Orlofferfelde congregation in 1677, 18
while the Polish Sawatskys were found in Flemish
congregations by at least 1743. 19
Concluding Thought
In the end, the historical clue that a study of
the Frisian-Flemish division most leaves us with
is not about ethnicity but about unity. Looking
back, we see how a Church became divided and
remained so, in spite of common theological
convictions. We also see that the disunity only
allowed other less biblical traditions to gain
prominence. Perhaps this is a fitting lesson for
those of us who claim an Anabaptist heritage
today, since we still have a difficult time getting
along!
Endnotes
1 A. Verheyden, Anabaptism in Flanders (Scottdale: Herald
Press, 1961), 56.
2 George H. Williams, The Radical Reformation, Third
Edition (Ann Arbor: Edwards Brothers, 1992), 1178.
3 Horst Penner, Die Ost- und Westpreußische Mennoniten
(Karlsruhe, Heinrich Schneider, 1978), 64.
4 C.J. Dyck, The Writings of Dirk Philips (Scottdale:
Herald Press, 1992), 468.
5 Williams, 1179.
6 Dyck, 471.
7 Ibid., 520.
8 Ibid., 494.
9 Ibid., 483.
10 Ibid., 509.
11 Ibid., 495.
12 Williams, 1182.
13 Peter Klassen, A Homeland for Strangers (Fresno: Center
for Mennonite Brethren Studies, 1989), 16.
14 John Friesen (ed.), Mennonites in Russia (Winnipeg:
CMBC Publications, 1989), 27.
15 Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 2 (Scottdale: Mennonite
Publishing House, 1959), 339.
16 Penner, 204.
17 Namens-Verzeichniss der Mennonitengemeinden (Danzig:
Edsin Groening, 1857), 3 and 8. Information for background
of family names from Die Ost- und Westpreußischen
Mennoniten, 227-361.
18 Penner, 321.
19 Ibid., 330.
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