We were sailing on the North Sea, but always with the profile of Frisian Islands visible. The sloop was equipped with a compass mounted in front of the tiller, and the trusty De Kaert told us we ought to take bearing toward the mouth of river Elbe, but we preferred to rely on our own eyes for navigation. That meant sailing during daylight hours only. A fresh and constant southwesterly breeze allowed us to clip along at a good eight knots. By the end of the day, the sloop was north of Spiekeroog and Wangeroog, the last of the eastern Frisian Islands. We anchored in a deep tidal inlet between them and began to warm up our soup.
Our journey continued from one sheltered anchorage to another; around the Jutland peninsula on to Kattegat. Further on, we drew nearer the Öresund or Sound. It is here the Danish Crown collects duty on ships going to and from the Baltic Sea. According to the De Kaert, at the Sound, we were faced with a choice of two different routes. One route would take us inland to the German city of Lubeck and the second straight to Danzig. We understood that sooner or later we have to leave shore and begin sailing, night and day, toward our destination.
With the help of our compass, we sailed past the island Bornholm and on towards Danzig. We spotted a harbor and a town onshore and sailed in. It was a beautiful, old Hanseatic City, not Danzig but Kolberg in Pomerania. Danzig, we learned, was 150-nautical miles to the east. We were embarrassed, but now on the right track. The route was easy— just follow the shoreline to the mouth of the Vistula River. We found it with no effort at all.
We were told on arrival that more than a thousand ships from the Low Countries visit Danzig every year. The first thing Dietrich and I did after securing the boat was head for a market. Our supplies were running low; there was very little bread, and not much soup left on board the boat. In my mind, there was something peculiar about that soup. It was three weeks old but seemed as fresh as if it were just made. It should be covered in mold or at least fermenting but wasn’t. It wasn’t normal.
I used my silver Carolus to buy bread and cheese and received some copper coins back as change. I asked the woman behind the counter what was available that I could use to make soup. She gave me the ingredients for Weisse Bohnensuppe, a white bean soup, and told me how it was made. We chatted in Plautdietsch, a language is most often spoken along the shores of the North and Baltic Seas. It is a mixture of Dutch and the Low German languages.
The first thing I did when I got back to the Geest was to put the dried beans in water to soak. Then Dietrich and I headed back to town to find the von Loytzen brother’s bank. It wasn’t hard – the place was a big one. We decided it would have to be considering it financed King Sigismund II Augustus and his wars. The king’s lost wetlands are known as the Grosse-Werder, meaning “the large holm”. It lays between the Vistula River and the Nogat River at its right, both rivers of which run to the Baltic Sea. It turns out the wetland property in question is as large as of Luxembourg.
Michael von Loytzen was a handsome man with a long nose, a small mustache and a chin divided by a thin beard. He was dressed in a black suit, with a strange, square white collar. The von Loytzen’s were well-traveled men. Michael von Loytzen had visited the wealthier towns of the Low Countries and admired the Dutch ability to reclaim land from the sea, and their knowledge of cultivation. He brought this knowledge back to his brother who felt they could profit from what he had learned.
They established a manor, Loytzenhof, in the Grosse-Werder and stocked it with the productive Frisian cows von Loytzen had seen in his travels. He had also observed how the Dutch used windmill pumps to dry the land. This method, the brother’s felt, could be the perfect solution for drying the Grosse-Werder, thus increasing its value tenfold.
Initially, their goal had been to interest all lowlanders to immigrate. But, due to the religious terror in the Low Countries, they got mostly Mennonites and other Anabaptists.
We should have known it wasn’t going to be easy. Even though the banking brothers had already given land to hundreds of Mennonite family’s, we found they were now waiting until they had enough folks to set up next settlement of at least ten families.
The von Loytzen’s planned that the members of each community would establish an association to be responsible for tenancies. It would also be expected to guarantee dams, ditches, and other drying works were done in time. True, the first ten years of tenancy is free, but after that, the rent was five thalers per acre, not the half thaler our friend Huisman had speculated. Farm sizes varied from 50 to 125 acres, depending on your needs and ability to cultivate it. In addition, the von Loytzen’s had negotiated with the government making it possible for Mennonites to be released from the military service.
And, so we wait. Dreams of building a house, plowing a field, or doing any work at all would have to be put on hold. Luckily, we did have Grandpa’s kettle, so we would soon have soup.
Into the kettle, I poured clear water, added the drained soaked beans and salt, and put it on to cook. In the meantime, I cut up smoked ham and diced onions, garlic cloves, celery, and asparagus. The result was very tasty – good enough even for Grandma.
Johannes van der Smissen, 1839
A teacher immigrates to Reval
I was born in Altona, on the right bank of the Elbe River, in Schleswig, a part of Denmark. I am the fourth child of Gysbert III van der Smissen and Catharina de Jaeger. The van der Smissen’s are a large family and all are Mennonites.
My childhood was both wealthy and impoverished. It was rich in that the van der Smissen family owned an old and affluent Trading House business, but poor in that we were forced to conserve because the business was slowly creeping toward bankrupt.
Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, was one of the principal reasons for failure. He had conquered almost all Europe, excepting Great Britain. In retaliation, two years before my birth, he declared a Continental Blockade to Britain. Almost all foreign trade ceased, and the van der Smissen Trading House suffered. There was no longer a need to fit out our existing ships or build new ones.
Particularly hard hit it was to my relative Jacob Gysbert van der Smissen. At that time, he was director of the family enterprise. The stress of fighting to keep the business afloat had caused a decline in his health. He suffered a stroke from which he never recovered. Fourteen years later, the Trading House business was in ruin; a hard blow to my parents and the whole family. I was sixteen years old at the time, and newly baptized.
My parents had planned for my brother and me, as soon as we finished school, to start training to work with the family in the business. For that reason, I attended our local school in Altona. Then came the collapse that changed my life.
Unfortunately, Altona was not considered a good enough school to prepare me for acceptance into a university so I would have to set my sights on something less lofty. My thoughts turned to become a clerk, a lawyer, a priest, something I could do to support myself.
The closest good school for me attend was Ratzeburg, a respectable, 700-year-old Cathedral School, located on an island in the middle of a lake, but whose students are welcomed at most German universities. Johann George Russwurm was the school’s principal and a tough teacher of religion. His son, Carl, was and is my best friend.
After I finished school at Ratzeburg, I attempted to study mathematics at the University of Copenhagen. It didn’t take me long to realized math was not going to be my life’s mission. I knew that Carl was studying at Berlin University, so I decided to transfer there to study what I felt was my true calling, theology. Carl and I soon crossed paths and decided to share a rented flat.
We discussed religion almost every evening. Although he eventually decided to get re-baptized, he would never be an active Anabaptist. Besides our mutual viewpoint on religion, we were both members of the student fraternity Burschenschaft Arminia, active in many German universities.
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