View source for Saar Amish Mennonite Church (Saarland, Germany)

Saar Amish Mennonite Church, sometimes known as the Moselle congregation, now extinct, whose members lived in the Rhine Province of [[Germany|Germany]] and in [[Luxembourg|Luxembourg]]. The congregation was founded by Mennonites emigrating from Lorraine about the beginning of the 19th century. The first elder was a Planck of Helleringen. The services, at which the Ausbund was used into the 20th century, were conducted every four weeks in German in a [[Deaconess|deaconess ]]home. For the instruction of their youth the 1880 catechism (see Catechisms) printed in [[Zweibrücken (Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany)|Zweibrücken]] was used. [[Feetwashing|Footwashing]] was observed in connection with [[Communion|communion]] services, and church discipline applied. The congregation of one hundred members, mostly farmers and millers, lived scattered in seventeen villages. The congregation had a fund for the support of the poor. Nikolaus Nafziger was long an elder of the congregation. In 1936 when it had 32 members and Otto Schertz as preacher, the congregation merged with [[Ixheim (Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany)|Ixheim]] which in 1937 in turn merged with the Ernstweiler congregation to form the Zweibrücken congregation, which since 1952 has been in effect combined with the [[Kaiserslautern (Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany)|Kaiserslautern]] congregation. The Saar congregation was listed under various names in the <em>[[Christlicher Gemeinde-Kalender (Periodical)|Christlicher Gemeinde-Kalender]]</em> in the past 50 years. Often the word [[Luxembourg|Luxembourg]] was combined with it, and the present Luxembourg congregation was once a part of Saar. Saargebiet was the most common name and the one used at the last, although as late as 1927 it was called "Luxembourg und Saargebiet." During the French occupation of the Saar territory (1945-57) the Mennonites living in the territory were organized as a separate Saarland congregation (1949), which in 1957 had 62 baptized members.
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