THE MENNONITE BROTHERHOOD IN RUSSIA (1789 - 1910), P. M. Friesen, 1911

witz and Wadzeck and others) Now that we have presented a brief summary of our pedigree as well as our spiritual and blood ancestors (shame on him who forgets his mother and is ashamed of his faithful nurse!), we want to attempt to present a brief portrayal (derived from various sources) of the Prussian Mennonites. a) Under Polish Rule. The Mennonites of Prussia also suffered persecutions, even though not bloody ones. They were especially threatened with repeated expulsion. Thus it happened, among other things at the provincial diet of Marienburg of 1646, that the lord of Pomerellen angrily demanded that they be banished. He accused especially the Danzig city fathers of being the cause of their toleration and thus also the cause of the fact that God had visited them with the flood and other events because of these heretics. In the lively debate that followed, Jan Dzialinsky, an economist from Marienburg, and a few other nobles came to the aid of the Mennonites, demonstrating that these people brought the greatest benefits to the land in that they improved old and built new dams against the floods of the Vistula and Nogat rivers, and that one should rather be concerned that more of them be brought into the country. "One can easily see where a lazy, drunken farmer or where an industrious, sober Mennonite lives.” In order to avoid being excommunicated by the Catholic Church, Dzialinsky and those of a mind with him had to retract their remarks, but a majority against the Mennonites was not achieved, especially because of the negative attitude of the representatives from the major cities, and the issue concerning the Mennonites was quietly passed over in the minutes of the provincial diet. This one example shall stand for many. On one occasion, during a particularly stormy argument over the “Men- nonite question” in the royal Polish Senate, a high nobleman became so agitated in his defense of the “Anabaptists” that he forced his way to the very throne of the king. But even on this occasion the hostile recommendations were not acted on, and the threats of expulsion were Prussia 49 transformed into protective documents (“Privileges"). In 1764 the West Prussian Mennonites sent their delegates, Cornelius Gerdsen and Cornelius Willms, to the Polish king Stanislaus August Poniatovsky and received from him a document, dated December 20, 1764, which confirmed all their old religious and residential privileges, namely the charters of privileges of 1650, 1660, 1694, 1699, 1732 and 1736. According to Reiswitz and Wadzeck, the content of all of these documents conveyed the message “that one must protect the Mennonites because they were a useful people; the ancestors of the kings had brought them out of the Netherlands in order to cultivate the marshlands.” b) Under the German Hohenzollem. That is how it had been under Polish rule. But it was to become more difficult for the Mennonites during the reign of the