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“Our” Mennonite Churches in Europe

As you may have noticed, a “goodly portion” (to quote my father-in-law) portion of both sides of the Henss & Rabideau families have roots in Amish/ Mennonite/ Anabaptist traditions.  Out of curiosity, actually out of a desire to find church building photos, I did a little web research on our families’ past church homes.  As you might have guessed, nothing identifiable remains of our Prussian/ Poland Mennonite congregations, the Second World War took care of that.  However, I have stumbled across a number of our families’ Alsatian congregations on the Internet.

It is wonderful to see that many of our predecessors’ beliefs and traditions live on and that our family’s work is continued by those who remained in the home country (Heimatland/ Patrie).  The links below provide information to those Mennonite congregations today:

With respect to our Prussian/ Poland Mennonite connections The Mennonite-Polish Friendship Association freely provides documents describing the accomplishments and status of the Mennonite past in that region.

If any of our readers have information or photos regarding the history for any of these faith communities, we would greatly appreciate hearing from you.  Please use our Contact us page, we’d love to share information.

Finding Former Eastern German Place Names

One of the great challenges in researching areas like the former German Eastern Provinces Zeyer Kirche Ruins 2011-3 is that they are all gone- governments, people, Churches, libraries, Universities, and yes, in many cases, houses and villages as well.  In an effort to help me, and perhaps others, identify place names, I am creating this document with its eclectic cross reference materials.

Hopefully these documents, websites, etc. will prove useful to those of us who have difficulty in finding ‘our family’s’ former German places and locations.

Former Prussian Places & Locations
(Westpreußen u. mehr/ West Prussia & more)

Documents

Errata for 9000 Village Names in Prussia document:

  • Zeyersvorderkampen = Kępiny Małe
  • Zeyersniederkampen = Kępiny Wielkie
  • Zeyer = Kępiny
Web Sites
  • Atlas des Deutschen Reichs
  • GenWiki.de has many pages covering former German Lands.  The following are particularly relevant to my searches:

Should you have any additional pointers or corrections you’d like to contribute, please either leave a comment on this post or send me a note via our Contact form.

 

 

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