Before 1711 the entire population of so-called Low German Mennonites lived in one region – the Vistula River delta, in what later became the province of West Prussia and is now northern Poland. In 1709 these people found themselves in a difficult situation. Not only were they in the middle (both geographically and chronologically) of the Great Northern War (1700–1721) between Sweden and Poland, which had devastating economic consequences for them,¹ they had just lived through the coldest winter and spring Europe had seen in living memory.² The Danzig harbour and the length of the Vistula River remained frozen well into late spring, bringing trade to a near standstill. This, together with the destruction of crops, led to devastating price increases throughout the region. To make matters worse, 1709 brought what would be the deadliest epidemic to hit the world’s Mennonite population in its 500-year history.

Many of us are familiar with the two major epidemics which had significant effects on the Low German Mennonite population: the flu pandemic of 1918, which hit nearly every Mennonite family on the North American prairies,³ and the typhus epidemic, which swept through the Mennonite colonies in Ukraine during the winter of 1919–1920.⁴ These epidemics are singed in our memory as our parents or grandparents told us about the effects on their families and communities. However, these experiences were not new. Going back through the previous three centuries of Mennonite history we can see that Low German Mennonite communities experienced many waves of epidemics of varying sizes.⁵ This was part of life in those days. The epidemic of 1709, however, stands out in terms of size and impact.⁶

The bubonic plague (usually referred to as die Pest in contemporary German literature) broke out in various locations in southern Poland around 1702 and worked its way north. By 1708 it had reached the first Mennonite location, the small congregation of Klein Nessau in the region of Thorn (now Toruń, Poland). The following year, after preaching a sermon to the invading king of Sweden and his officers near Thorn, Mennonite minister Steffen Funk died of the plague.⁷ By late 1709 it had reached Danzig, with disastrous consequences. In March, seven members of a family in the old city died, showing obvious signs of bubonic plague. Within a year an estimated 50–60% of the population of Danzig had died. Unfortunately, almost no Mennonite records have survived from that time.⁸ All we have are baptism, marriage, and death records for the Flemish congregation in Danzig and the baptismal register for the Frisian congregation of Montau, about 100 kilometres to the south. Both registers, for the years 1700 to 1720, show the usual fluctuations seen in Mennonite baptismal records. The Danzig Mennonite death records, however, show a dramatic spike in deaths for the year 1709.⁹ The total for 1709 (160 adult members) is greater than or equal to the sum of deaths of the prior decade (140) or the following decade (160). The number of deaths was so extraordinary that the church official who kept the record produced a breakdown of deaths for that year: 66 married men, 72 married women, 4 unmarried male members (Gesellen), 18 unmarried female members (Jonfers), and 249 unbaptized (these would have been those under the age of about 25), for a total of 409. The same person squeezed in a note at the bottom of the page showing that within the city of Danzig, 24,533 died, and outside the city (refers to villages that were within the city’s jurisdiction), 8,070 died, for a total of 32,603. The estimated population of the city for the year 1700 was about 50,000.¹⁰ Since there is no reason to believe that Mennonites fared any differently than the rest of the population, one can estimate that about half of the total number of Mennonites in Danzig died in 1709.

The plague created an additional problem for the Flemish Mennonite church in Danzig. After their Aeltester, Christof Engmann, died of the plague, the congregation needed to elect a new one. Tradition dictated that the election had to be conducted by an Aeltester from another church, who would then ordain the newly elected Aeltester. The nearest Flemish Mennonite Aeltester was Dirk Siemens of the Gross Werder congregation. Because of the plague it was forbidden for anyone to enter or leave the Danzig city fortifications, and Siemens had to promise that he would not stay overnight if allowed inside the city. Travelling up from the Gross Werder, he stayed in Neuendorf overnight, then passed through the “Garden” and the “Petershagner Thor” (Petershagen gate) into the city and on to the church. Here he conducted the election and ordination on September 5, 1709.¹¹

Interestingly, the number of marriages in Danzig spiked the following year. This also happened in the Mennonite church.¹² The number of marriages in 1710 was nearly double the averages over the preceding and succeeding decades. Likely this was because of the large number of men and women left without a spouse after the epidemic swept through the city. This trend reflected the difficulties of earning a living and taking care of a family for single parents.

What were the consequences for Mennonites? The war, the frost, and the epidemic left the Mennonite population depleted and destitute. One must remember that during this time Mennonites were still expected to pay the Polish crown a large annual sum in order to maintain their Privilegium rights.

Northern Lithuania, which at that time was part of East Prussia, was hit even harder the following year. The depopulation was so extensive that Frederick William, the king of Prussia at the time, recruited Mennonites to settle in the Memel River region near the city of Tilsit to increase the population. After two false starts, this community continued until the end of the Second World War.¹³ These “Lithuanian” Mennonites made up a large portion of the original settlers of the Chortitza colony, and many Canadian Mennonites are descended from this group.¹⁴

Although it has been estimated that 50–60% of the population of Danzig died in 1709, the effects would have been somewhat reduced in the less densely populated countryside, where the majority of the Mennonite population lived. My crude guestimate is that a tenth to a quarter of the world’s entire Low German Mennonite population died that year. It is impossible to narrow this down to a reasonable estimation since we do not know either how many died outside of the cities such as Danzig and Elbing, or the worldwide population of Mennonites in 1709.

1. See, for example, the effects on the Heubuden congregation: https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Heubuden_(Pomeranian _Voivodeship,_ Poland). ↩︎
2. Juan José Sánchez Arreseigor, “Winter is Coming: Europe’s Deep Freeze of 1709,” National Geographic History, January/February 2017, 18–21. ↩︎
3. For a Mennonite perspective of influenza in Manitoba see Glen R. Klassen, “Now it’s Here,” Mennonite Historian 46, no. 2 (June 2020), and references therein. ↩︎
4. See https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Typhus. For an example of the death toll see http://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/russia/Chortitza_Typhus_Deaths_1920.pdf. ↩︎
5. For an example see Helmut T. Huebert, Events and People (Winnipeg: Springfield Publishers, 1999), 64. ↩︎
6. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_War_plague_outbreak, and Karl-Erik Frandsen, The Last Plague in the Baltic Region, 1709-1713 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010). ↩︎
7. See https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Donner,_Heinrich_(1735-1805). ↩︎
8. An exception is a letter preserved in the Mennonite Heritage Archives. See Kat Hill’s blog post, https://anabaptisthistorians.org/2020/10/01/death-and-dreams-in-a-time-of-plague/. ↩︎
9. Records of the Flemish Mennonite Congregations of Danzig. For scans of the originals and transcriptions see: https://mla.bethelks.edu/metadata/cong_310.php. ↩︎
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Gdańsk. ↩︎
11. Ernst Regehr, Geschichts- und Predigertabelle der Mennonitengemeinde Rosenort, 2nd ed. (Elbing, 1939). ↩︎
12. Records of the Flemish Mennonite Congregations of Danzig. ↩︎
13. Erwin Wittenberg and Manuel Janz, “Mennonite Settlers in Prussian Lithuania,” Preservings, no. 40 (2020): 19-26. ↩︎
14. For more information on this topic, see Wittenberg and Janz. ↩︎