Village News

We have just received our first donation of the year, a 1753 3 Pfennig coin from Münster, Germany. In 1753 there weren’t any Mennonites in the city of Münster. The group now known as Russian Mennonites were in Prussia at the time, and the Swiss-German Mennonites were further south in Germany. So what does this coin have to do with Mennonites? To answer that question, we have to go back to over two hundred years before this coin was minted, to a time before there was such a thing as “Mennonites.”

Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation in 1517 when he posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the All-Saints Church in Wittenburg. What began as an honest attempt to reform the Church soon turned into a religious schism that divided Catholics and Protestants. At the time, there was no concept of religious freedom as we understand it; if the leader of one country was Catholic, the entire country had to be Catholic. The same went for Protestant countries (so named because they protested the moral decline of the Church). The Anabaptists emerged in the 1520s in Switzerland. They agreed with the Protestants on many things, but went another step further. Where both Catholics and Protestants practiced infant baptism, the Anabaptists believed that Christians should only be baptized upon an adult confession of faith.

Despite opposition from the Catholics and Protestants, the Anabaptist movement grew around what are now the Netherlands, Germany, and the Czech Republic. Most Anabaptists were peaceful, but there was one sect that believed that Christ would soon return to Earth and destroy everyone who wasn’t Anabaptist. This is where things got out of hand: in order to hasten Christ’s return, members of this radical sect took control of the city of Münster in early 1534 and declared it the “New Jerusalem.” The new leaders made everyone get re-baptized and declared a community of goods (common ownership of everything). In response, the Bishop of Münster laid siege to the city. Mounting Münsterite casualties is likely why the leaders soon instituted polygamy. Theoretically, this was to better follow the example of the Old Testament patriarchs, but practically, by this time there were many more women than men.

The kingdom of New Jerusalem was not to be. The siege was broken on June 24, 1535, and the leaders were soon arrested and executed. This is where the Mennonite connection to this 1753 coin comes in, as it speaks to this violent episode in early Anabaptist history. This is important because it was in response to the Münster Rebellion that Menno Simons finally agreed to become a leader of the peaceful Anabaptists in the Netherlands. An ordained Catholic priest, he withdrew from the Catholic Church in January 1536 and his followers soon became known as Mennists, then Menninists, and then eventually as Mennonites.

That’s what a 1753 Pfennig from Münster has to do with Mennonite history. Not too bad for a single coin!