Małgorzata Grzywacz

The article concentrates on the renewal of monastic life in the European evangelical churches after 1945. The Reformation, initiated by the speech of Martin Luther (1483–1546), brought about great changes in this respect, questioning the current principles of the presence of the monk’s life in the Christian community. Criticism of religious life, formulated by the father of the Wittenberg Reformation, was undertaken by both Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531) and John Calvin. Until the 19th century, monasticism had not seen rehabilitation of the churches that emerged in the wake of the Reformation. This did not mean, however, that it was completely forgotten. Due to renewal movements, including radical Pietism, which in the 17th and 18th centuries became popular in Protestant Europe, monastic issues returned. Eminent figures in the history of Christianity were discovered. Their world of faith and personal experience was mediated through community life, based on prayer rules and practices known since the time of the original church. At the same time in France, Germany and England a return to the abandoned ways of implementing Christian life began. The article analyses the inspiring community of Grandchamp to indicate the way tradition in the churches deriving from the Reformation has been discovered and re-read.

The Reformation altered the understanding of and attitude to the sacraments as had developed since the beginnings of Christianity. As in other religions, most of them were associated with a religious contribution to pivotal points in the lives of individuals and referred to a person’s specific biographic situation. In this respect, sacraments may be understood as a central point in rites of passage whereby an individual’s life acquires an aspect of order and is merged with a broadly understood community. The article traces the formative process of confirmation as a rite of initiation into Christian adulthood as seen from a Protestant perspective. Confirmation, or a strengthening in faith, derives directly from what was originally part of the ceremony of baptism. The article casts more light on the understanding and practice of baptism and the gradual emergence from it in the Western Church by the end of the 9th century of a separate sacrament known as confirmation.

As Reformation theologians departed from a sacramental understanding of confirmation, a process began whereby former confirmation was transformed into a ceremony marking a person’s maturity to participate in church life. Based on church teaching and catechization, a custom of public confession of faith and of „strengthening” a person in such confession became a major ceremony in churches rooted in the Reformation. The article focuses on an early stage in the changes which had, by the 16th century, been adopted as customary practice common to Lutherans, Anglican or reformed communities. The confirmation ceremony was most helped to spread by pietism in which desires for an individual to internalize faith led to increased appreciation of confirmation as being also important to the community which granted an individual rights to partake fully not only in church life (such as in Lord’s Supper), but also in elective, decision-making bodies in Evangelical churches (e.g. in elections of parish councils, diocesan synod, and national synod).

It would be difficult to imagine contemporary German-language Protestantism without cyclical meetings organized bi-annually within the so called German Evangelical Church Day (Evangelischer Kirchentag). Sometimes these meetings attract well over a million people and they offer to the participants a unique opportunity to get acquainted with and experience the inner variety and wealth of the Churches, associations and initiatives belonging to the evangelical denomination. Since the  year 1949, the above meetings took on an organized form and they belong to one of the most important ways of articulating the presence of Protestantism in the European culture. The inventor and spiritual father of these meetings was Reinold von Thadden-Trieglaff (1891–1976), an heir of a Pomeranian estate Trieglaff (Trzygłów). After World War II the family estate of the von Thadden family lay within the territory of the Polish state and it currently belongs to the joint German and Polish cultural legacy of the West-Pomeranian Province. Reinold von Thadden belonged to the leading representatives of German Protestantism in the 20th century. From the very beginning of his public activity, he became involved and assisted in various Church initiatives whose aim was to revive and strengthen the activity of the Evangelical laity, on both the central and local (Pomeranian) plane. The goal of von Thadden’s activity was, among others, a return to the sources of the Reformation and a new up-to-date interpretation of the principle of the universal ministry of all faithful, which has not been applied in practice. The historically-shaped model of the Pastors’ church which strengthened the position of the alliance between the lay and church authorities (the ruler as the summus episcopus), was sealed by the Old Prussian Church Union (1817) which introduced uniformity into the functioning of the parishes which were subordinated to the clergy and where parish councils enjoyed but minimal competence. It was only the territories subject to the intense expansion of the Pietist (XVIII c.) and community movements (XIX c.) that were able to retain their independence and sovereignty. Among these territories, there was among others Pomerania, whose eastern part (east of the Oder river – the so called Rear Pomerania) was inhabited by many noble families (among others von Kleist, von Zitzewitz, von Thadden), who were opposed to the religious policy of the Prussian kings and its theological consequences. A part of the Pomeranian church province, situated between Szczecin and Słupsk, extending to the Gdansk Pomerania in the north, was characterized by a high degree of church integrity and by traditional evangelical religiosity. In his initial attempts to stimulate the activity of the laity, von Thadden drew on the traditions of his family home as well as on the historical experiences of the entire region; it was a meeting held in Szczecin in the year 1932 that was to be the precursor of the later days of the Church. Its goal was to overcome the domination of the pastors, focus the devoted evangelicals on the idea of the renewal of individual and parish life. The main emphasis of this renewal was to be the message contained in the gospel. Yet, the above goals were attained only partially and the rapidly developing propaganda and the activity of the Nazis directed against the church circles, put a halt on further development of this initiative. However Reinold von Thadden’s public work did bring about his decisive protest against the policy of Hitler and the Nazis, whose aim was total subjugation and subsequently, complete elimination of Christianity from public life. One of the main creators of the Professing Church (Bekennende Kirche) which stood in opposition to the Nazi activities, was precisely Reinold von Thadden. His experiences dating back to the years 1933–1939 allowed him to participate actively in the post-war renewal of Germany, whose expression is the institution of the Church Day and its specific kind of spirituality – based on the Bible and the broadlyunderstood human needs.

The article deals with issues related to the history of the relations between churches as institutions, and their individual clergymen, and the Nazi state. The source referred to in this article is the intimate journal of Minister Friedrich Onnasch (1881–1945), the superintendent of the Koszalin Church District and parish priest of Saint Mary’s Church in Koszalin, murdered by Soviet troops in Barlinek in February 1945. A document written on a regular basis, never published, is a detailed account (though coded, due to censorship), showing the experience of the clerical office in a time of totalitarian oppression. It shows the situation in the Evangelical Church after 1933 and the commitment of Minister Friedrich Onnasch and others, among them Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), associated with Pomerania, in the movement of the Confessing Church. It explores the areas of Christian religion in its Evangelical topography, limited to the space of the former Prussian province of Pommern (Provinz Pommern) and Western Pomerania after 1945.

In the context of the notion of mnemotopos as the memory matrix related to a place and its dynamics, the article analyses the autobiographic materials recorded by the Evangelical religious clergy. Among others, it examines the autobiography of Reverend C. Gottlieb Rehsener, of Pomeranian origin, working in the area of so-called Lithuania Minor near Klaipeda. The mnemotopic reconstruction permits revival of the forgotten cultural areas that had been present in the history of Europe till around 1945.

The assumption of power by the Nazis in Germany initiated a series of changes which radically changed the situation of the Christian Churches. A role of no small importance in this process was played by the structures and contents that were the result of the Protestant development of the German Christians movement. This theology, pointed towards Nazism, contributed significantly to the reception of völkisch thought, which was gradually and effectively to replace the basic doctrinal elements of the Evangelical Churches with a new message whose meaning was adjusted to the state ruled by Hitler and his supporters. This text constitutes an attempt to present the realisation of the theological contents of the Deutsche Christen movement with reference to sacred architecture and the Bible.

The article “Polish-German places of rememberance and commemoration made manifest”.
These notes, made in the margin of a certain Polish-German project and its documentation, show from practical side the areas of historical rememberance that is present in the awarness of Polish and German university students. The concept of “recollection and reminiscence places” related to specific sites and events in history of Great Poland is provided with a commentary based mainly on so-called “participatory cognition”.