Doopsgezinde Bijdragen - Current Issue

Abstract Since the middle of the sixteenth century, the Frisian town of Franeker, located not far from the port city of Harlingen, a region significant for early Anabaptism, became a hotspot for hundreds, if not thousands, of Mennonite refugees from Southern Dutch and Flemish regions. Both the Frisians and the refugees with differing regional cultures and habits were subject to persecution by Roman Catholic rule. However, and p Read More

Abstract In 1924, the Hollandsch Doopsgezind Emigrantenbureau (HDEB) emerged from a spontaneous relief effort by Doopsgezinden (Dutch Mennonites) in Rotterdam. Initially, they received Mennonite refugees from the Soviet Union who passed Rotterdam on their way to the Americas. After Stalin’s emigration ban in 1930, they provided extensive construction aid to refugees who settled in Brazil. The HDEB archive is not Read More

Abstract In this article, I examine the memory culture of Russia-German Anabaptist congregations – namely, the Mennoniten, Mennoniten-Brüder, and Evangelical Christian Baptists – and the influence of the Gulag on this culture. To do so, I first define and analyse the concepts of tradition and generation in greater detail. During the tsarist era, long before the Gulag, four distinct channels emerged through which tradition was p Read More

Abstract This article tells the story of the involvement of certain prominent members of the Anabaptist congregation of Utrecht in the great financial stock craze of 1720, the world’s first speculative bubble. This was a larger phenomenon that stretched itself over Western Europe, originating in Paris and then spreading to London, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and eventually, Utrecht. In the latter city, this speculative cra Read More

Abstract François Adriaan van der Kemp was a Mennonite pastor who served in Leiden and Huizen from 1777 to 1787. A scholar with a broad academic background, he studied in Groningen and Amsterdam. In addition to his pastoral duties, van der Kemp was a fervent and outspoken patriot, even presiding over a militia in Leiden, a role that set him apart from traditional Mennonite practices. In Mennonite historiograph Read More

Abstract Three eighteenth-century Amsterdam Mennonites were owners of a slave plantation on the Danish Caribbean island of St. Thomas: pastor Joannes Deknatel, his sister-in-law Susanna van Almonde and her brother Daniel van Almonde. The plantation pops up in the division of the estate of Joannes and in the estate inventory of Susanna. It turns out to be The Trumpet Hill with thirteen enslaved people, which they had bou Read More

Abstract As a follow-up to the article on Deknatel, I present an eighteenth-century Mennonite businessman in Amsterdam who felt responsible for the physical and spiritual well-being of the enslaved people on the plantation Akerboom in the Dutch colony Suriname. First, I give an impression of his socio-economic position. Then I examine him as a person directly involved with the owners of the plantation until its sale in 1770. The Read More

Abstract During the nineteenth and early twentieth century, when the Dutch colonized the numerous islands which now form the country of Indonesia, scores of Dutch Mennonites (Doopsgezinden) went to live and work there, either for a long period (sometimes lifelong) or a shorter number of years. They worked as government officials, including lawyers, judges, teachers, researchers, (assistant-)residents or even hi Read More

Abstract In his polemic against Justus Lipsius (1590), Coornhert passionately argued that individuals must stand up for their faith. This marked a sharp contrast with the position he had defended in his Verschooninghe (1560). At that time, Coornhert had advocated a stance closely aligned with that of the Family of Love and its leader, Hendrick Niclaes: it could be wise not to openly confess one’s faith or risk one’s life for what we Read More

Abstract Choosing between refusing military service and defending your country is a difficult choice, as a former conscientious objector. What questions should you ask young people? The obligation to perform military service in the Netherlands was temporarily halted after the Cold War, when the army was professionalized. Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, politics are now more frequently discussing the obligation of mi Read More