Wössingen Mennonite Church (Walzbachtal, Baden-Württemberg, Germany)
Wössingen Mennonite Church, originating about 1700, a member of the Verband conference, in 1959 had a membership of 49 and 17 unbaptized children, with Rudolf Funck as elder (1948) and Helmut Kreiter as preacher. The village of Wössingen in the town of Walzbachtal (coordinates: 49° 0′ 42″ N, 8° 36′ 27″ E) lies about 10 miles east-northeast of Karlsruhe. Wössingen is one of the oldest Mennonite congregations east of the Rhine. The Swiss Mennonites who fled from their homeland in Bern and Zürich from 1650 on, first came into the Palatinate, but from about 1700 on also into the territory of the Margrave of Baden-Durlach. The tolerant Karl Wilhelm (Charles William) (1709-1718), founder of Karlsruhe, in 1715 offered religious freedom to all who would settle in the vicinity of his castle Karlsruhe. The Mennonites who came here became tenant farmers on the baronial estates where they were highly valued, and they have remained largely of this type. The descendants of the original families who settled in this neighborhood are now largely members of the Wössingen and Durlach congregations. In 1731 Wössingen appears in Ernst Müller's list of 13 Swiss congregations in the "Upper Palatinate." The Naamlijst for 1766 lists 'Wesingen" as part of a congregation called "Boekschaft, Streichenberg en Wesingen," with Martin Krauter as elder, ordained 1746. It was listed further in the Naamlijst for 1786, 1793, and 1802, with Jost Glück as elder throughout, ordained preacher in 1756 and elder in 1773. In the 1857 Namensverzeichnis Heinrich Funk and Martin Funk appear as elders, ordained in 1835 and 1839 respectively, with a baptized membership of 55. In the Mannhardt Jahrbuch of 1881 the elders were listed as Philipp Schneider (1859) and Christian Funk (1872), membership 40.
|Author(s)||Harold S Bender|
Cite This Article
Bender, Harold S. "Wössingen Mennonite Church (Walzbachtal, Baden-Württemberg, Germany)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1959. Web. 24 Sep 2020. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=W%C3%B6ssingen_Mennonite_Church_(Walzbachtal,_Baden-W%C3%BCrttemberg,_Germany)&oldid=86256.
Bender, Harold S. (1959). Wössingen Mennonite Church (Walzbachtal, Baden-Württemberg, Germany). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 24 September 2020, from https://gameo.org/index.php?title=W%C3%B6ssingen_Mennonite_Church_(Walzbachtal,_Baden-W%C3%BCrttemberg,_Germany)&oldid=86256.
Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, p. 989. All rights reserved.
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