Doopsgezinde Bijdragen - Volume 51, Issue 1, 2025

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 perhaps surprisingly, Frisian authorities were very reluctant to abide too strictly to the heresy laws. Consequently, the Mennonite residents and migrants there enjoyed a relatively high degree of freedom. As a result, Franeker would become the first Northern center for illegal Mennonite book production. Since 1556, the printer Jan Hendricksz secretly published the early core of Dutch Mennonite literature, including New Testaments, concordances, hymnbooks, martyrologies, and tracts by Menno Simons and Dirck Philipsz. However, life changed dramatically for the Mennonites as soon as the seven Dutch provinces declared independence from Spanish rule and the new republic embraced Calvinism. Although persecution and martyrdom had ceased, daily life suddenly became more complex. Mennonitism became a target of harsh Calvinist propaganda. The establishment of the Dutch Reformed university of Franeker in 1585 worsened the situation. Disputations and disruptions of Mennonite church services became an almost-daily routine for the newly appointed Dutch Reformed theologians and ministers. Their polemics became a lucrative source of revenue for university-affiliated printers and publishers. This is evidenced by the numbers of anti-Mennonite and anti-Doopsgezind tracts and treatises produced by the first university press of Gillis van den Rade between 1586 and 1614. A two-sided picture is revealed by the surviving 1623 auction sale documents outlining the large stock of books owned by Jan Lamrinck, one of Van de Rade’s Calvinist successors who had passed away suddenly. The records reveal that, while Lamrinck had been serving the anti-Mennonite book market in line with the polemic tradition of his predecessors, he also kept a supply of books that catered to the interests of the local Mennonite market. This surprising finding highlights the ambiguous and complex dynamics of Mennonite and Doopsgezind social acceptance in this newly established period of emancipation during the early years of the Dutch Republic.¹

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 yet public and is only described in broad outline but contains material that is useful to the history of the Russländer. It provides information about the support of Doopsgezinden for emigrants and victims of famine, the experience of spiritual and national kinship between Doopsgezinden and Mennonites from the Soviet Union, and the latter’s susceptibility to Nazism. This article aims to provide an impression of what the archive can offer researchers in terms of further research opportunities by providing a global history of the HDEB’s main activities, namely: support for refugees in transit in Rotterdam (1924-1929), actions of the last groups of refugees from Siberia (1929-1931) and assistance in building a colony in Brazil (1931-1938).

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 passed from one generation to the next. However, three of these four channels were destroyed during and after the Gulag period. The younger generation found itself in the Gulag under radically altered social conditions. Only with the dissolution of the Gulag did conditions emerge that allowed for the normalisation of a congregational life. Mennonite congregations were left with significant gaps in transmitting tradition, which profoundly shaped their collective identity. The Gulag had a lasting impact on these communities, in part because commemoration and remembrance were strictly prohibited. It was only after emigration from the Soviet Union, decades after the traumatic events, that surviving witnesses began to break their silence. Yet, due to demographic changes, very few members of the older generation remained to share their experiences. This resulted in an imbalance in intergenerational memory.

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 craze had as goal, besides the quick enrichment of its investors, the founding of the Provincial Utrecht Chartered Company. The profitability of this commercial venture was largely based on colonial trade, made possible by the coerced labour of enslaved people in Suriname and elsewhere.

Based on recent publications on the topic and well as his own research at the Utrecht Archive (HUA) on the history of the Anabaptist community in the city, the author lists by name which members of the congregation were involved in the speculative scheme, what their roles were, and what effects their involvement had on the communal life of the congregation. Attention is also given to the human stories on the other side of the Atlantic, and the suffering endured by the enslaved as a result of their subjection to systems of exploitation. Finally, this essay illustrates the continuity of the effects borne by the transatlantic trade on this particular religious congregation throughout the centuries, thereby providing a broader longue durée sketch of how colonialism shaped the history of communities on both sides of the Atlantic.

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 historiography, he has often been viewed as an outsider or, in some interpretations, a deviation from the faith’s principles.

This article seeks to rehabilitate van der Kemp as both a beloved pastor to his congregation and an important figure in Mennonite history. His militant stance should not be seen as a departure from the Mennonite tradition of non-violence, but rather as a response to the specific political and social context of his time. During the second half of the 18th century, he was not the only Mennonite to serve in a militia, though pastors in such roles were rare. His case invites a broader exploration of the tensions between Mennonite pacifism and the political realities of the era, a theme also seen in other Christian denominations.

Research in the Leiden Archives and a close reading of his autobiography reveal that van der Kemp’s militia involvement was not an isolated incident. Influenced by figures such as the Mennonite Seminary professor Heere Oosterbaan and the pastor/publicist Johannes Stinstra, van der Kemp’s actions reflect a broader shift in Mennonite thought. The turbulent years of the anti-Orangist uprisings prompted a reevaluation of the traditional non-violent stance, suggesting that, during this period, pacifism within the Mennonite community was increasingly open to challenge.

This article builds on the work of Karel Vos, who in 1923 explored the evolving attitudes towards non-violence within the Dutch Mennonite tradition, offering a nuanced understanding of how van der Kemp’s story fits into this larger historical context.

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 bought in 1739 from Johan Laurens Carstens, director of the Danish West India Company. He himself had bought the plantation a year earlier and granted the right of use to the missionaries of the Hernhutian or Moravian Church, a pietistic movement of Nicolaus Ludwig Count of Zinzendorf. Carstens’ condition that he would be compensated was met by the three Mennonite buyers, who were followers of Zinzendorf. In Amsterdam his supra-denominational movement had followers from almost all religions, who at the same time remained members of their own church. An overview is given of the leading Mennonite Moravian Brethren there and of their meeting places in and outside the city. Keeping enslaved people in itself was not a problem for the Moravian Brethren, but they were deeply concerned about the cruel conditions they saw, for example on St. Thomas, where their first missionaries were sent in 1732. Deknatel was a great supporter of their mission among the enslaved. As owners of The Trumpet Hill the three Mennonites had no profit motive and left the management entirely to the missionaries, for whom the plantation was an economic basis of their missionary activities. In 1761 the Moravian Church purchased the plantation from Deknatel’s widow and the Van Almonde brother and sister.

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 most remarkable thing is his initiative to invite a Moravian missionary there. His missionary work on the plantation was, however, short-lived and was marked by the cruelty of the local director towards the enslaved people.

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 higher ranking officials, but also as owners or administrators of coffee, tea and sugar plantations or sailors. Their number increased rapidly from around 1830 onwards. In general they had a liberal-minded religious attitude, so hardly any of them had contacts with the Doopsgezinde mission, which started in 1851 in Central Java. Nevertheless a certain number among them was looking for a religious home, which they did not find in the so-called Indische kerk. So in 1913 they decided, with assistance of like-minded Doopsgezinden in the Netherlands, to ask a Dutch pastor to pay a pastoral visit. Pastor Hendrikus Britzel arrived with a list of no less than 500 names and stayed for a couple of weeks. Unfortunately the First World War made next steps impossible and the dream to form a separate congregation was never materialized. Probably untill World War II several hundreds of Dutch Doopsgezinden were employed in the colony. After the harsh time of Japanese occupation and the Indonesian struggle for independence, only a few remained. In general these Doopsgezinden hardly criticised the colonial government and only a minority among them had really cordial and equal relations with the local population or were interested in the nationalist movements which arose from the early twentieth century on.

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 were merely external forms. A person should try to avoid an untimely.

By 1590, however, Coornhert viewed religious diversity as a given, and he had come to see open debate as the way to peaceful coexistence. In his view, believers had a duty to challenge one another’s errors—and everyone, in principle, was entitled to do so. For Coornhert, freedom of speech was not only a natural right and a Christian obligation, but also a fundamental element of Dutch liberty.

When Justus Lipsius argued in his Politica (1589) that one should conform outwardly to the prevailing religion and refrain from openly professing a divergent faith, Coornhert responded forcefully. Their polemic was both a principled exchange over freedom of expression and the role of the vernacular in that context, and a fraternal quarrel between former allies.

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 military service. At the age of seventeen, boys and girls receive a letter from the national government that registers them for military service obligations. Is it not necessary to have a conversation with the younger generation before they agree to that call?