Beyond the Martyrs Mirror: The Prints of Jan Luyken

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Originally exhibited at the Regier Art Gallery, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas, October 30 to December 4, 2015. Excerpted from an article of the same name in Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage 41 no.1 (January 2018): 10-29

by Rachel Epp Buller

Jan Luyken (also spelled Luiken) was born in Amsterdam into a middle-class family led by a school-teaching father who was devout in faith and committed to intellectual study. After his formal schooling, Luyken apprenticed in the workshop of a local painter, Martin Saeghmolen, and then learned etching and engraving from printmaker Coenraet Decker. He also met regularly with a group of friends, who called themselves De Wijngaardranken (The Vine Tendrils), to write poetry. In 1672, at the age of twenty-three, Luyken married Maria den Oudens. Of their five children, only their son Caspar survived childbirth. At the time of their marriage, Luyken joined the Anabaptist movement at his wife’s instigation, but he did not fully commit until having visions and experiencing a powerful religious conversion in 1673. Luyken remained committed to the Anabaptist church and to piety for the rest of his life.

Following Luyken’s death in 1712, fellow artist Pieter Sluiter etched Luyken’s portrait, shown at left, and published it together with a six-line poem by Adriaan Spinniker that encapsulates how his contemporaries viewed him:1

The desire for God and good deeds, which burns in LUIKEN’s heart
Shown in his behavior, and etchings, and poetry,
Spread thus its glow in the modest countenance,
Which gaze made each aspire to share his way of living.
Thou, who dost always view and read his work with pleasure,
Look frequently at this face, as incentive for thy spirit.

Professional Work

Although he is known predominantly in today’s Anabaptist communities for his iconic etchings in the Martyrs Mirror by Thieleman J. van Braght (1685), Jan Luyken produced over three thousand other works that included paintings (of which only a few survive), drawings, prints, and poems. Luyken published twelve books focused on piety and Scripture, for which he both created prints and wrote poetry. He also produced illustrations for nearly five hundred books by other authors in disciplines as varied as biology, chemistry, geography, shipbuilding, early Christian history, and Dutch history, among others. The books and prints in this exhibition offer a closer look into the breadth of Luyken’s work.

Many of Luyken’s prints fall into the category of emblem literature. Throughout sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, but particularly in the Low Countries, artists and writers favored the use of emblems, which combined images and verses for didactic ends. Emblems generally included a title or motto, an illustration, and an explanation in prose or poetic form. Taken together, these three pieces sought to impart a moral lesson to the viewer or reader. Luyken’s emblems offered meditations on living a godly life and on attaining the path to salvation, using a wide variety of symbolism that would have been easily understandable to his contemporaries.

De Onwaardige Wereld vertoond in Zinnebeelden (The Unworthy World, as told in Emblems), 1710

Dangerous-Stand

The Dangerous Stand, from The Unworthy World (Menno Simons Historical Library photo)

Dutch artists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries commonly depicted immoral or dangerous behavior, partly as an instructional device to their viewers. In this book of religious emblems, Luyken pictured “the unworthy world” as a warning to urge his readers onto the right path of Christian life. In the scene displayed here, a mortal hangs by a thread above the fires of hell while the specter of death waits to snip his life thread with scissors. If only the man will change his ways, he might be saved. The accompanying verse, Matthew 10:28, reminds us that a better fate awaits us beyond this life if we so choose it: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Dangerous Stand), from De Onwaardige Wereld (The Unworthy World), 1710. Reproduced in Het Werk Van Jan en Casper Luyken door P. Van Eeghen, vol. 2, 1905

Preperatory-for-dangerous-stand-1

Preparatory drawing for The Dangerous Stand (Menno Simons Historical Library photo)

A catalogue raisonné lists all of the works created by a particular artist. This compendium of the works of Jan and Caspar Luyken includes not only the finished prints but also the sketches and preparatory drawings made in advance of the completed works. Looking at this drawing in comparison to the eventual print (see page 15) shows how Luyken worked out the basic composition in the drawing but added a much higher level of detail and linework to the finished product. Notice also how the compositions are reversed since Luyken would have drawn this image onto the copper plate, only to have it printed as a mirror image.

Tafereelen der Eerst Christenen (Scenes of the First Christians). With prints by Jan Luyken and verses by Pieter Langendijk and Claas Bruin, 1722; reprinted 1740, “Bedieninge des Doops in een rivier” (Ministry of Baptism in the River)

baptism

Ministry of Baptism in the River, from Scenes of the First Christians (Menno Simons Historical Library photo)

Even posthumously, Jan Luyken’s work continued to garner much attention. Ten years after Luyken’s death, ninety-two of his engravings were published in this volume of early church history. Poems by Pieter Langendijk and six-line verses by Claas Bruin accompany each of Luyken’s images. Not surprisingly, given Luyken’s Anabaptist connections, one of the scenes he chose to include in his series of early Christians is a scene of adult baptism. Notice how Luyken’s compositional lines lead our eyes to the baptism in the center of the image, with small background figures building up to larger foreground figures and with circular ripples of water surrounding the key players.

De Schriftuurlyke Geschiedenissen en Gelykenissen, Van het oude en nieuwe verbond [Scriptural Histories and Parables of the Old and New Testaments], 1712

Genesis III: 1-7, from De Schriftuurlyke Geschiedenissen en Gelykenissen, Van het oude en nieuwe verbond (Scriptural Histories and Parables of the Old and New Testaments), 1712

adam-and-eve

Genesis 3:1-7, from Scriptural Histories and Parables of the Old and New Testaments (Menno Simons Historical Library photo)

In picturing the fall of humanity from the Garden of Eden, Luyken placed the blame squarely on the figure of Eve through both image and text. In the print, Eve occupies the center of the composition and points to the tree of knowledge while she hands the apple to Adam. The rhyming verse that accompanies the image, which Luyken titled “Man Seduced,” laments the bitter outcome of Eve’s temptation.

Jan Luyken, De Schriftuurlyke Geschiedenissen en Gelykenissen, Van het nieuwe verbond (The Scriptural Stories and Parables of the New Testament), 1712

Luke-4-with-verse

Image for Luke 2:6-7, from The Scriptural Stories and Parables of the New Testament (Menno Simons Historical Library photo)

In this visual retelling of the New Testament, Luyken highlighted both somewhat obscure and well-known stories. The scene depicted here illustrates the two most familiar verses of the nativity story in Luke’s gospel:

6 So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. 7 And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Notice how Luyken positioned the Christ Child at the center of the composition, surrounded by the parents, the shepherds, and the animals of the stable. Luyken’s rhyming poem on the theme of Christ’s birth accompanies the print.

Wreede moordt der Spanjaarden tot Naarden, den eersten December des jaars 1572 [Cruel Murder by the Spanish at Naarden, 1 December 1572], 1677-79, from Hugo de Groot, Nederlandtsche Jaerboeken en Historien (Netherlandish Yearbook and History), 1681

Naarden

Cruel Murder by the Spanish at Naarde, from Netherlandish Yearbook and History (Rijksmuseum photo)

In historical prints such as this, Luyken displayed a rare patriotic sentiment. The scene depicted here marks an episode in what came to be known as the Spanish Fury, a series of bloody confrontations in the sixteenth century when Spanish troops sacked and pillaged Dutch towns in an effort to maintain Catholic rule and allegiance to the Spanish Crown. Luyken pictured the chaos of the battle, and the closed-in setting suggests that the citizens of Naarden had no way to escape the villainous Spanish soldiers.

Dr. Rachel Epp Buller is a feminist art historian, print maker, book artist, and mother of three whose art and scholarship often speak to these intersections. She speaks and publishes widely on the maternal body in contemporary art, including her book Reconciling Art and Mothering (Ashgate/Routledge). She privileges collaboration in her work, which has resulted in various outcomes, including the edited collection Mothering Mennonite, with Kerry Fast (Demeter Press); an exhibition and book, Alice Lex-Nerlinger, Fotomonteurin und Malerin / Photomontage Artist and Painter, with Das Verborgene Museum in Berlin; and the exhibition “Beyond the Martyrs Mirror: The Prints of Jan Luyken,” with Bethel College student Alexandra Shoup, exhibit designer  David Kreider and archivist John Thiesen at the Mennonite Library and Archives. She is a Fulbright scholar, a board member of the National Women’s Caucus for Art, a regional coordinator for the international Feminist Art Project, and current associate professor of visual arts and design at Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas.

  1. Josephine V. Brown, “Biography of Jan Luiken,” Digital Collections, Pitts Theology Library, http://www.pitts.emory.edu/collections/digitalcollections/luiken.cfm ↩

Melchior Hoffman’s Defense of Female Prophets

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The relatively wide array of roles open to women in Melchiorite congregations—Anabaptist congregations found in the Netherlands and North Germany in the sixteenth century and founded by the itinerant apostle Melchior Hoffman—has long been recognized by scholars of early modern Anabaptism. As Arnold Snyder noted in Anabaptist History and Theology, “nowhere in the Anabaptist movement did women achieve and maintain as lofty a pastoral and leadership role as in the Strasbourg Melchiorite community.”1  Sigrun Haude, in her 1998 essay “Anabaptist Women—Radical Women” echoed the point and argued that “the greatest freedom enjoyed by women can be found in those Anabaptist groups that emphasized visions, prophecies, and the Spirit.”2 Hoffman did indeed emphasize visions, prophecies, and the Spirit. He believed, firmly, that he lived in the Last Days, a time in which God would pour out his Spirit on all people, men and women alike.3

After his arrival in Strasbourg in 1529, Melchior Hoffman encountered Lienhard and Ursula Jost, a married couple who had both had visionary and prophetic experiences over the course of the 1520s. He set out to disseminate their visions and prophecies through print (the Josts were illiterate, and had thus not been able to publish them themselves). Hoffman first published Ursula’s visions in 1530. This first edition of her visions, published by the Strasbourg printer Balthasar Beck, did not record her name, but instead referred to her simply as a Gottesliebhaberin, a feminine noun meaning “lover of God.”4 For Hoffman, the emergence of contemporary prophets such as Ursula and her husband Lienhard served as validation for his apocalyptic ideas. Hoffman’s ideas about prophecy and the work of the Spirit also shaped his views of how church hierarchies should be structured. In the afterword to the 1530 edition of Ursula’s visions he included a discussion of church offices and the gifts of the Spirit; Ursula, for instance, possessed the gift of prophecy but not the gift of interpretation.5

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The title page to the 1532 edition of Ursula’s visions, published jointly with Lienhard’s prophecies and housed at the Austrian National Library in Vienna

In the 1530 edition of the visions, neither Melchior Hoffman nor Ursula Jost made an issue of Ursula’s gender. They simply took for granted that women could prophesy. In 1532, however, Hoffman offered a more systematic defense of female prophets in a foreword to the second edition of Ursula’s visions. This second edition, printed by Albert Paffraet in Deventer, appeared alongside an edition of Lienhard Jost’s prophecies and its survival at the Austrian National Library in Vienna was unknown to Klaus Deppermann, Hoffman’s most recent biographer.6 In his foreword, Hoffman acknowledged that “some are bewildered and angry that God works and lays out his plans through such a poor and simple little woman.”7 Hoffman contended, however, that this was not remotely novel, and that God had spoken to and through women since the beginning of the world.

To reinforce this point, Hoffman provided a list of women in the Old and New Testament through whom God had spoken or accomplished His purposes in other ways. His list was comprehensive, with a few exceptions—curiously, he omitted Huldah, whom the authors of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles explicitly identified as a prophetess.8 He began his list of biblical prophetesses and female servants of God with the women of Genesis: Eve, Sarah and Hagar (both of whom heard the voice of God), and Rebecca, Isaac’s wife, who became the mother of two people groups.9 Exodus provided the example of Myriam, Aaron’s sister, and Judges the stories of Samson’s mother, Jael (who defeated the general Sisera), and Deborah (who was not only a prophetess, but also a “great teacher of Israel”).10 Hannah, who prayed so fervently for a child that the priest Eli mistook her for a drunk woman, went on to become the mother of a great prophet of Israel in 1 Samuel, and Judith and Esther both rescued the people of Israel in the books that bore their names.11 Finally, Hoffman highlighted the woman with seven sons in 2 Maccabees, whose sons died for the sake of God’s law and who ultimately gave up her own life “in a very manly way.”12

Unsurprisingly, Hoffman began the New Testament portion of his survey of biblical women with Mary the mother of Jesus, and he went on to list two other women from the beginning of Luke: Elizabeth, who recognized Christ while he was still in the womb, and the prophetess Anna, who recognized Him at the Temple.13 Mary Magdalene, he continued, became the first of Christ’s followers to see Him after the Resurrection and was tasked with spreading this good news to the apostles.14 The Samaritan woman met with Jesus and preached about him to her city in the book of John, and the daughters of the deacon Philip in Acts had the gift of prophecy.15 Hoffman ended this cast of characters with a reference to twelve Gentile prophetesses “reported in the histories”—a possible reference to prominent women from the early and medieval church, though the reason for the number twelve is not clear.16

Since the Bible explicitly called certain women prophetesses, the theoretical possibility of female prophets was undisputed among medieval and early modern Christians, even as many other ecclesiastical roles remained closed to women. Hoffman, however, went further than many of his contemporaries; he described the Samaritan woman’s actions as “preaching” (predigen) and used the word “teacher” (lerrerin) to refer to both Judith and Deborah.17 He did not directly acknowledge or attempt to reinterpret the Pauline command from 1 Timothy that women should remain silent in the churches, but instead mined other Pauline letters for support for his position. After all, had not Paul said in Galatians that all—male or female—were one in Christ? And had he not acknowledged in 1 Corinthians that women could prophesy, provided they did so in an orderly fashion? Moreover, Hoffman added, women could also take on the role of teaching, “if there were no enlightened men.”18

Ultimately, for Hoffman, God gave the gift of prophecy to all who hungered for truth and righteousness without regard for age, gender, or social station, as was made clear in Joel 2, which spoke of sons and daughters, old and young, manservants and maidservants as recipients of the Spirit of God.19 The only trait that disqualified a person from prophesying was pride and hardness of heart. Indeed, Hoffman acknowledged that there were many learned women (schriftgelerder weyber), who were better-educated and more prominent than Ursula, to whom God might have revealed Himself instead. However, despite their prestige, these women were unsuitable because they were proud and haughty.20

While Hoffman’s support of women such as Ursula Jost and Barbara Rebstock has long been known, the recently rediscovered foreword to the second edition of Ursula’s visions sheds further light both on the biblical examples Hoffman used to justify his support of women’s active leadership in Melchiorite communities and the boundaries he still placed on this leadership. The range of possibilities Hoffman envisioned for women in the church was wider than that afforded to them by many of his contemporaries. Ultimately, however, women were second to men even in Hoffman’s congregations, since the role of teaching was open to them only when no qualified men were present to fill it.

  1.   C. Arnold Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology: Revised Student Edition (Kitchener: Pandora Press, 1997), 321. ↩
  2. Sigrun Haude, “Anabaptist Women—Radical Women?” in Infinite Boundaries: Order, Disorder, and Reorder in Early Modern German Culture, ed. Max Reinhart (Kirksville: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1998), 318-319. ↩
  3. Cf Joel 2 ↩
  4. Ursula Jost, Prophetische Gesicht un[d] Offenbarung der götliche[n] würckung zu diser letste[n] zeit (Strasbourg: Balthasar Beck, 1530), passim. ↩
  5. Melchior Hoffman, afterword to Jost, Prophetische Gesicht, fols. C vii r-v. ↩
  6. For the English version of Deppermann’s seminal biography, see Klaus Deppermann, Melchior Hoffman: Social Unrest and Apocalyptic Visions in the Age of Reformation, edited by Benjamin Drewery, translated by Malcolm Wren (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1987). The survival of the 1532 edition of the Josts’ prophetic writings was briefly noted in Andrew Pettegree and Malcolm Walsby (Eds), Netherlandish Books: Books Published in the Low Countries and Dutch Books Printed Abroad Before 1601, Volume 1 A-J (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 753 and its contents were the subject of Jonathan Green, ‘The Lost Book of the Strasbourg Prophets: Orality, Literacy, and Enactment in Lienhard Jost’s Visions,’ in: The Sixteenth Century Journal 46:2 (Summer 2015), 313-330. ↩
  7. Melchior Hoffman, foreword to Ursula Jost, Eyn wore prophettin zu disser letzsten zeitt (Deventer: Albert Paffraet, 1532), fol. F4r. ↩
  8. For the story of Huldah, see 2 Kings 22:13-20 and 2 Chronicles 34:22-33. ↩
  9. Hoffman, foreword to Jost, Wore Prophettin, fol. F4r. ↩
  10. Hoffman, foreword to Jost, Wore Prophettin, fol. F4r. ↩
  11. Hoffman, foreword to Jost, Wore Prophettin, fols. F4r-F4v. ↩
  12. Hoffman, foreword to Jost, Wore Prophettin, fol. F4v. ↩
  13. Hoffman, foreword to Jost, Wore Prophettin, fol. F4v. ↩
  14. Hoffman, foreword to Jost, Wore Prophettin, fol. F4v. ↩
  15. Hoffman, foreword to Jost, Wore Prophettin, fol. F4v. ↩
  16. Hoffman, foreword to Jost, Wore Prophettin, fol. F4v. ↩
  17. Hoffman, foreword to Jost, Wore Prophettin, fols. F4r-F4v. ↩
  18. Hoffman, foreword to Jost, Wore Prophettin, fol. F4v. ↩
  19. Hoffman, foreword to Jost, Wore Prophettin, fol. F4r. ↩
  20. Hoffman, foreword to Jost, Wore Prophettin, fol. F3v. ↩

First Mennonite Church, Allentown, Pennsylvania,1958

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Members leaving worship at First Mennonite Church, Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1958. This photo was one of a series promoting expansion of the church building at that time. By the late twentieth century, demographics had changed and the First Mennonite Church declined in membership, with nearly all members living outside the city. In 2006, the congregation closed, and the building was taken up by the Eastern District Conference for a English-Spanish bilingual church plant called Christ Fellowship.

Forrest Moyer, Archivist, Mennonite Heritage Center

Praying to the Lord Against the City?

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Dürer_FourHorsemen

Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut The Four Horsemen (1498), an interpretation of Revelation 6:1-8 featuring Death, Famine, War, and Pestilence (from left to right).

In 1639, the city council of Zurich published its so-called Manifest, an apologetic mandate which justified authorities’ recent repressive actions against the Anabaptist population living in the rural jurisdictions surrounding the city. Among the reasons given for a campaign of incarceration, intentional impoverishment, and child removal—the weight of which ended a more than century-long Anabaptist presence in the area—was the nonconformists’ alleged utterance of malevolent prayers. Instead of interceding on behalf of the authorities, in keeping with the instruction of the apostles [1 Tim. 2:1-2], Anabaptists were accused of asking God to visit “pestilence, war, and other plagues” on the territory’s inhabitants.1

This particular accusation is of uncertain origin, but it was not new. The authors of the Manifest claimed that Anabaptists had cultivated this specific prayer “among themselves for years.” Indeed, clerics stationed in rural parishes had complained of a prayer with similar content in a list of grievances submitted to Zurich’s synod already in 1601. Allegedly, several local Anabaptists had asked God to rain down disaster on the territory so that Reformed authorities would forget about the dissidents and leave them alone.2 Anabaptists denied such claims. For example, Hans Müller, a deacon from Zurich’s southeastern Oberland, dismissed the charge categorically as an untruth spread by “evil people.” In keeping with Christ’s command, his brethren prayed for those who persecuted them, Müller insisted.3

We cannot determine definitively whether beleaguered nonconformists actually beseeched God to inflict their Reformed neighbors with disease, famine, and armed conflict. Still, the occasional reappearance of the claim that they did leaves us with a few interesting questions: why were some members of Reformed communities convinced that Anabaptists engaged in such malicious devotions, despite dissidents’ frequent denials, and why did they care?

Reformed pastors—those who reported the practice in question—likely believed that Anabaptists were capable of such spiritual sabotage because it accorded with the stereotypes of the dissident movement reinforced by their clerical education. Ministers’ libraries contained texts that attributed to local Anabaptists the seductive power of heretics and the disruptive potential of rebels.4 In addition, in the early 17th century pastors periodically attended academic events organized around discussion of anti-Anabaptist theses, including one entitled “Concerning the diabolic possession of men . . .”5 Furthermore, ill-seeking prayer communicated a lack of concern for the welfare of the Reformed society. This fit with clerics’ understanding of the intentions behind Anabaptists’ withdrawal from the religious life of the majority: nonconformists’ refusal to participate in certain religious and civil ceremonies was viewed as an act of spiritual arrogance. Since religious disunity held the potential to invite divine wrath, their behavior put the entire Christian community at risk. By offering up malevolent prayers, Anabaptists requested with their words what they were calling for with their actions.

Other members of the Reformed majority may have believed allegations of ill-intentioned prayers because of some rhetorical consistency with other instances of Anabaptist speech. Anabaptists often openly denounced what they deemed to be the generalized moral depravity of Reformed society, and implied its members’ perdition. They also frequently got into trouble for purposefully provoking their Reformed neighbors in shared social spaces. When Anabaptists told fellow travelers on the street that they had seen a devil on the local minister’s shoulder, or suggested that reconciliation with the Reformed church was akin to a dog vomiting and snarfing the results back up again, they deliberately baited their audience by publicly impugning their faith.6 In this context, the malevolent prayers which accusers attributed to Anabaptists might have been understood to reflect a similar spirit.

Undergirding all of these concerns was an assumption that Anabaptists’ words mattered, that they had the power to enact some kind of effect on reality. One the one hand, this belief existed in tension with Reformed leaders’ claims that Anabaptists’ spiritual and civil disobedience had cut them off from communion with God. On the other, it fit easily within a worldview that saw the crises of the period—indeed, exactly those disasters the Anabaptists were accused of appealing for—in the context of a broader spiritual conflict, in which Zurich was deeply engaged. These were not theoretical disasters, but catastrophes that marred seventeenth-century Europeans’ everyday existence. A primary response of the city council to the threat posed by the period’s economic ruin and the Thirty Years’ War was to mandate mass participation in days of prayer and repentance. That Anabaptists were engaging simultaneously in spiritual counter-efforts simply confirmed their identity as opponents of the common good in the eyes of authorities. The assumption, of course, was that God would only answer the petitions of those faithful to him. Some, however, believed that Anabaptists’ utterances had the power to invoke diabolical forces. This was the charge often lodged against Anabaptist medical practitioners—midwives, doctors, and veterinarians—who supposedly harnessed dark powers in the practice of healing arts.

The charge of uttering malevolent prayers represents a curious facet of the long-standing relationship between Anabaptists and representatives of Zurich’s Reformed majority. It sheds light on how contemporaries understood the effects of dissidents’ clandestine devotional practices on social well-being. It also shows that, despite their non-participation in Reformed religious culture, Anabaptists were deeply implicated in rural communal life. Their participation in networks of village sociability and exchange was a feature of long-term coexistence. Differences in religious belief and practice did not make living together impossible. However, as this case shows, this coexistence did not exclude conflict over speech with religious content. When open conflict did erupt, latent accusations (of questionable derivation) could be reactivated and used to sanction the repression of members of the local religious minority.

  1. “Wahrhaffter Bericht…,” in Täufer und Reformierte im Disput: Texte des 17. Jahrhunderts über Verfolgung und Toleranz aus Zürich und Amsterdam, ed. Wälchli, Philip, Urs Leu, and Christian Scheidegger (Zug: Achius, 2010), 125. ↩
  2. Zentralbibliothek Zürich (ZBZ), Ms B 163, 82v. ↩
  3. ZBZ, Ms B 163, 303v-304r. ↩
  4. Hanspeter Jecker, “Lange Schatten und kurzes Gedächtnis – Heinrich Bullingers posthumer Einfluss auf die Behandlung der Täufer in der Schweiz,” in Heinrich Bullinger: Life – Thought – Influence, ed. Emidio Campi and Peter Opitz (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 2007), 709-713. ↩
  5. A thesis entitled “Disputatio theologico-philosophica, de diabolica hominum obsessione, et de daemonum eiectione” was submitted for dispute during synodal meetings in October 1626. Urs B. Leu, “Letzte Verfolgungswelle und niederländische Interventionen,” in Die Zürcher Täufer, 1525-1700, ed. Urs B. Leu, and Christian Scheidegger (Zürich: Theologisher Verlag Zürich, 2007), 208. ↩
  6. Francisca Loetz has argued that blasphemers engaged in similar forms of verbal performance. Dealings with God: From Blasphemers in Early Modern Zurich to a Cultural History of Religiousness (Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2009), 272-73. ↩

Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society Seeks Executive Director

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Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society seeks an executive director to lead a vibrant organization poised to build on current strengths and expand its historical, educational, and visitor programming.

The executive director oversees approximately twenty-two employees, a combined budget of $1.1 million, and programming at three sites on two campuses: the LMHS library, archives, and museum gallery at Millstream Road, Lancaster, PA; the Mennonite Information Center, also at Millstream Road; and the Hans Herr House Museum at Willow Street, PA.

The successful candidate will combine effective executive team leadership with business acumen, strategic planning and implementation, and resource development skills. Candidates must possess strong communication skills, an ability to engage a wide range of constituencies, and demonstrate Anabaptist faith commitment. Anabaptist candidates of all backgrounds are encouraged to apply. 

Applicants should provide a letter of intent that includes their vision for LMHS, a résumé, and three references. Submit materials and inquiries to Steve Nolt, search committee chair, at search@lmhs.org. The search committee welcomes inquiries and will review applications until the position is filled.

More information at: https://www.lmhs.org/about/employment/

Samuel Ernst and the German Language

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Mark L. Louden

Two years ago I was reading through a fascinating publication that appeared irregularly between 1943 and 1946. Der Pennsylvanisch Deitsch Eileschpiggel (The Pennsylvania Dutch Eulenspiegel [<Till Eulenspiegel, a prankster in German folklore]) was brought out by by J. William Frey (1916–1989), who was for many years a professor of German and Russian at Franklin and Marshall College. Frey was a native speaker of Pennsylvania Dutch who wrote his doctoral thesis on the language at the University of Illinois and became a pioneer in the field of Pennsylvania Dutch studies. The Eileschpiggel, which bore the subtitle En Zeiding, Schwetzbrief un Blauderschtick far die Deitsche (A newspaper, newsletter, and chat-sheet for the Pennsylvania Dutch), included Pennsylvania Dutch prose and poetry along with many other items of interest for both “scholars and laymen.”

In the first issue of the Eileschpiggel, Frey printed a short piece in Pennsylvania Dutch by a fellow native speaker and German professor at Lehigh University, Ralph Charles Wood, who expressed his support for Frey’s enterprise. Wood wrote:

This is not the first time that people have tried to publish a Pennsylvania Dutch newspaper to talk a little about the language in the language itself. Around 1860, Samuel Ernst of Millwood, Gap, [PA], published a newspaper in three languages – High German, Pennsylvania Dutch, and English . . .

My curiosity was piqued, since I had never heard of Samuel Ernst and his trilingual publication. After a little sleuthing, I learned that Ernst was an “old” Mennonite who was born in Lancaster County in 1825, moved to Olathe, Kansas, in 1884, and died there in 1909. The newspaper Wood was referring to actually began in 1870 and was titled The Acorn and Germ.image1-17

According to the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online, The Acorn and Germ was published by Ernst and his son, Eleazar Israel (known as “E. Z. Ernst,” the “Z” referring to his mother’s maiden name, Zimmerman) from July until December 1870, at which time it was succeeded by Der Waffenlose Wächter (The weaponless watchman), which Samuel edited alone. The Wächter initially appeared monthly and eventually quarterly, continuing until 1888. Through the kind assistance of Iren L. Snavely, the Rare Books Librarian at the Pennsylvania State Library in Harrisburg,  I was able to obtain digital copies of several issues the The Acorn and Germ and Der Waffenlose Wächter from September 1870 through April 1871, some highlights of which I will share here.

Ernst’s newspapers were indeed trilingual, with material mainly in English and German, but also Pennsylvania Dutch. In my last post on this blog about Mennonites and Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch, I mentioned that Samuel Ernst is one of just two identified Anabaptists who published Pennsylvania Dutch material in the nineteenth century, the other being John H. Oberholtzer (1809–1895). Both Oberholtzer and Ernst expressed the concern in their respective publications that younger American Mennonites, especially schoolchildren, had insufficient knowledge of High German for the practice of their faith. This concern is shared by many Amish and Old Order Mennonites today, who continue to use the Luther Bible and German-language prayer and hymn books for devotions and worship.

A few words are in order about what kind of German was used by Anabaptists and other Pennsylvania Dutch speakers in Samuel Ernst’s day. Ralph Charles Wood, the German linguist and Pennsylvania Dutch scholar mentioned above, described it as “Pennsylvania High German” to distinguish it from the written German standard used in modern Europe. High German, so-called for the fact that it is based most closely on written dialects used in one part of the High (as opposed to Low) German dialect area (where “high” and “low” refer to the elevation of the Central European landscape), was not widely spoken in the 18th century, when the ancestors of the Pennsylvania Dutch set out for America. At that time and continuing into the 20th century, there was considerable variation in how German was written and even more variation in how it was pronounced when spoken.

Pennsylvania High German, which is still used by the Old Orders today, was strongly influenced by Pennsylvania Dutch, the vernacular language, as well as English. Its users, being cut off from German-speaking Europe since the 18th century, were unaffected by the increasing standardization of German vocabulary, grammar, spelling, and eventually, pronunciation throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The maintenance of High German in devotion and worship was important for generations of Anabaptists, as well as other German-American Christians, especially Lutherans. For contemporary Old Orders, the continued use of their Mudderschprooch (mother tongue), which refers to both Deitsch (Pennsylvania Dutch) and Hochdeitsch (High German), is a salient marker of an identity that connects them to the spiritual heritage they brought with them from the Old World.

image2-19Samuel Ernst’s reverence for German was ardent. At the top of one page in every issue of The Acorn and Germ he printed the aphorism

Wir ströben nicht um zeitlich’s gut,

Obgleich wir lieben Deutsches blut

which may be translated as “We do not strive for temporal goods, but we love [our] German blood.” The spelling and word choice are classically Pennsylvania High German and differ from how the aphorism would be rendered in its normative European counterpart:

Wir streben nicht um zeitliches Gut,

Aber wir lieben deutsches Blut.

Contemporary Old Orders might feel uncomfortable with the second part of Ernst’s aphorism, however they would find the quote below it that he printed from the Luther German Bible (based on 1 John 4 and 12) more in line with their sensibilities: “They are from the world; therefore what they say is from the world, and the world listens to them . . . if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.”

In the October 12, 1870, issue of The Acorn and Germ, Ernst published an interesting poem in Pennsylvania High German that he composed himself. Giving it the English title “On the German Language,” Ernst noted that the poem could be sung to the tune of “Yankee Doodle,” a fitting expression of the fundamentally American cultural milieu in which he and his fellow Mennonites lived.


Ihr jungen helten wachet auf,
Zum kampf der Deutschen sprache.
Laß nicht der dröchheit gahr den lauf
Durch schlummer, oder schlafe.

Das uns nicht der gute Geist
Die gabe gahr entzühe,
Obgleich in unsern odren flüßt
Daß Deutsche blut zum Ende.

Die ed’le Mutter sprache nun
Laßt nicht so gahr dahinden
Kost’s gleig was muhe, doch ist der lohn
Und nutzen auch zu finden.

In disem freyen Lande
Wo alle Völker wohnen,
Laß selbst den Kindern werden kund
Daß Deutsch, sich nicht läßt höhnen.

In Deutscher sprache war zuerst
Die Bibel Prot[e]stantisch,
Dem guten volke uberreicht
Nun ist sie Vatter-landisch.

Auch fast in allen Sprachen
Wie auch die “Druck erfindung,”
Und auch manch andre gutte Sach’n
Ihr’n uhrsprung Deutsch’r endöckung.

Auch selbst die sprache ist so leicht
Doch deitlicher auch keine,
Daß Man von ihr nun wenich braucht
Zur dämpfung ehrer Feinde.

Wo ihr Man die ehre gibt
Welch ehre ehr gebuhred,
Da zeigt ihr werd im a[u]genblick
Daß sie kein Esel führed.


Ye young heroes, awaken
To the battle for the German language.
Let not indolence run freely
Because of slumber or sleep.

May the Holy Spirit not from us
Take away the gift;
After all, in our veins flows
German blood till the end.

Now, do not abandon
The noble mother tongue.
Whatever effort it may cost, the reward
And utility are to be found.

In this free country
Where all peoples dwell,
Let even the children know
That German will not be scoffed at.

In the German language
The Protestant Bible was first
Passed on to the good people;
It is now a national possession.

Also in nearly every language,
As also the invention of printing
And also many other good things
[Owe] their origin to a German discovery.

And even though the language may be so easy [to learn],
None other is as precise,
Such that one needs to use just a little of it
To quiet its enemies.

Wherever one gives it its honor
That it is due,
It shows its value in that moment
[And] that it is led by no jackass.

The form of German that Ernst used was consistent with that of other Pennsylvania Dutch writers at that time; the poem’s content, however, would likely have struck his fellow Anabaptists as somewhat odd and perhaps a bit too worldly in its tone, bordering on the German-nationalistic.

There is much more fascinating material to be mined from the publications of Samuel Ernst, including on the topic of language, some of which I hope to share in future posts.

Peppernuts and other living traditions

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By Janneken Smucker

I didn’t grow up with peppernuts. My mom made simple Christmas cookies like peanut butter blossoms with Hershey kisses on top, or dipped peanut butter filled Ritz Bitz in chocolate. But when I married in to a so-called Russian Mennonite family—actually “Swiss Volhynian,” to be more precise—from Harvey County, Kansas, I learned about hardcore, generations-old culinary traditions, something my Old Mennonite family did not have.1 The women of this family, along with the men of some of the younger generations, are peppernut making machines, each year producing dozens of pounds of miniscule cookies, each about the size of a pencil eraser (when I try to make them, in contrast, they typically are the diameter of a dime). Like any humble family with its secret pride of tradition, these central Kansas Mennonites view the peppernuts of others as inferior creations. How could a bloated ginger cookie kissed with a gumdrop even be of the same genre as these refined anise oil rock-hard concoctions?

Skinny snakes of hard crumbly dough, that will soon be sliced into peppernuts. Image courtesy Tom Wedel.
Bagged peppernuts ready for distribution. Image courtesy Tom Wedel.]

 

Yet, that’s one of the great things about traditions: they evolve and shift and adapt to new lifestyles. To another family, those gumdrop cookies are peppernuts, and the crunchy eraser-sized bits are strange and foreign.

In my American Civilization course, an interdisciplinary general education class I teach every semester, the final unit of the course centers on folklore. I introduce the subject by using the American Folklore Society’s official definition: things that groups of people traditionally believe, do, know, make, or say, which serve as part of their cultural identity.

I ask my students to give examples of these behaviors from their own worlds—from their families, ethnicities, clubs, teams, sororities, and communities. I provide my own.  My Pennsylvania German background dictates that we must eat pork and sauerkraut on New Year’s Day in order to have good luck in the new year—we must snort ahead (by eating pig) rather than scratch back (by eating chicken or turkey). I describe being a fifth generation Mennonite quiltmaker, emphasizing that the quilts I make are quite distinct than those of my foremothers, but part of an important cultural tradition that ties me to these previous generations. I recall how for years I have made pizza every Saturday evening, since my family did that throughout my childhood, in the early years using Swiss cheese from Eastern Ohio. My mom remembers how her mother made pizza in the 1950s on Saturday evenings, using a Chef Boyardee sauce. We aren’t Italian-Americans maintaining a tradition from the old world; instead we created a new tradition that has carried on several generations.

My students counter with tales of the Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve, popularized by Italian-Americans but with southern Italian origin. A Venezuelan American student shared her family’s tradition of walking around outside carrying luggage shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day as a way to ensure travel in the new year, and burying money only to dig it up after the clock strikes midnight in order to bring economic prosperity. One student came from a family of taxidermists and described how she grew up learning how to stuff a carcass. Others describe distinct foods, prayers, superstitions, jokes, and songs that are deeply rooted to their sense of belonging within their tribes, however they define them.

I then emphasize that folklore is living, not some kind of static fossilized behavior that is unchanging over time. Last New Year’s Day my daughter and I gathered with friends to make jioazi, Chinese dumplings inspired by the ones I learned to make when in Sichuan Province during Study-Service Term at Goshen College in 1996. We filled them with pork and cabbage, along with ginger and garlic and sesame oil. I knew that by eating this combination of ingredients, even if wrapped in a flour wrapper and steamed and fried, I would still have fulfilled my requisite intake of lucky foods. And I think this might become a new tradition in my family.

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My daughter stuffing jiaozi wrappers with pork and cabbage, New Year’s Day 2017.]

  1. Jeanette Krehbiel Wedel, Swiss Volhynian Favorite Recipes (Pretty Prairie, KS: Swiss Mennonite Cultural and Historical Association, 2017).   ↩

La Rouviere Children’s Home, Marseilles, France, ca. 1941

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#2-La Rouviere Children's Home, ca 1941

(MCC Photo/Virgil Vogt)

During and after World War II, Mennonite Central Committee operated or supported numerous homes for orphaned children throughout Europe. Here MCC worker Edna Ramseyer, in front, holds the youngest member of the La Rouviere Children’s Home near Marseilles, France. Names of others pictured are unavailable.

Frank Peachey, Mennonite Central Committee Archives

Brick Mennonite Church, Richfield Pennsylvania

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Brick Church - east side
Brick Mennonite Church is located one mile west of Richfield, Pennsylvania. The building was constructed in 1868 and replaced an 1800 log meeting house. It has not been used for regular services since the 1930s and has been restored by the adjoining Juniata Mennonite Historical Center.
Beidler History Center Photos 022Interior of the restored Brick Mennonite Church located one mile west of Richfield. The restored building is used for an annual public hymn sing, the third Sunday in September, and other special events by appointment.
Beidler History Center Photos 013Brick Mennonite Church cemetery in foreground with south end of the church in view. Directly across the road is the former John Kurtz farm. This family lost five infants and toddlers before 1872.  When the diphtheria epidemic came through the Juniata Valley in 1872, they lost six of the seven surviving children in one week. The parents and eleven children are buried in this cemetery.
All photos courtesy of Beidler collection -Juniata Mennonite Historical Center