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

The history of Mennonites in Amsterdam is
the 1 history of a large, urban congregation located
in Holland’s largest and chief city. In spite
of its situation it must be said that the church has
remained intact for more than four centuries and
has always counted its members by the thousands.
It is today the largest Mennonite congregation in
existence and no doubt always has been so.
“The United Mennonite Congregation of
Amsterdam” as the church is called, is located
at Singel 452 in a historic part of the city. This
church building was erected in 1608 and enlarged
in 1632 by the prominent merchant Warendorf,
who lived at Singel 454 which is now the janitor’s
dwelling. At his death he donated the building to
the Flemish Mennonite congregation.
This old church was built as a “hidden”
church, that is, it was erected between two street
fronts at a time when Mennonites were not allowed
to publicize their church life. The simple
and sober architecture, as we11 as a rectangular
floor-plan with the pulpit in the middle of the long
side, is a reminder of early Mennonitism.
This original Mennonite meetinghouse of the
Flemish Mennonites designated “near the Lamb”
because it was located near a brewery which bore
the sign of a lamb, has been preserved throughout
the centuries and remains today the center
of Mennonite life
not only in Amsterdam,
but for
a11 of Ho11and.
However, it has
not always been
so, and there were
in the seventeenth
century more than
a score of Mennonite
groups with
eleven different,
places of meeting.
To understand this
it is necessary to
refer a bit to the
earlier history of
the Mennonites in
Amsterdam.
In the sixteenth
century Mennonite
world many roads
led to Amsterdam.
The city was becoming
a kind of
“melting pot” for
many kinds of both
foreign and native
Mennonites. Typical
of this immigration
was Nicolaes
Biestkens, a Mennonite
printer
from Emden, who
moved his press
via Harlingen to
Amsterdam, or the
Mennonites in Amsterdam
Irwin B. Horst (Reprinted with permission from Mennonite Life 7, July 1952, 113-115)
Vondel family from Antwerp who arrived by way
of Cologne and Bremen. Amsterdam received its
share of the many refugees from the south who
were fleeing from persecution in Brabant and
Flanders. Thus the stage was set for Amsterdam,
rather than Antwerp or Emden, to become a leading
center of Mennonite life in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries.
However, it must not be thought that the congregations
in Amsterdam were composed only
of a Mennonite dispersion. From the beginning
of the Anabaptist movement in thc Netherlands
there was a strong indigenous brotherhood in Amsterdam.
Jan Trijpmaker, an apostle of Melchior
Hoffman, came from Emden in 1530 and was
later followed by Hoffman himself. It is known
that by 1533 there were already three to five
thousand Anabaptists in the city. When Jan van
Leyden ca11ed his faithful to Münster in 1534,
the authorities stopped twenty-one boats on the
Zuiderzee containing three thousand Anabaptists
who were mostly from Amsterdam.
The Münster aberration had its effect not
only on the Anabaptists in Amsterdam but also
on the city authorities, and both revolutionary
and peaceful groups were mercilessly persecuted.
Jacob van Campen, the leader of the peaceful
element, was executed. Hundreds were tortured
Interior of the Singelkerk Mennonite meetinghouse in Amsterdam. (Credit: Jan Gleysteen)
and put to death in the city. The town square
(the Dam) is holy ground for Mennonites, and
the most of the city on the west side near the Ij
became known as the “martyr’s moat” (Martelaarsgracht)
because of the many bodies thrown
into the water there.
A Memorial of the Singel Mennonite Church, Amsterdam
Preservings No. 26, 2006 - 29