Halle – Stockholm – Tobolsk and Back, Stronger Than Ever.

Curt Friedrich von Wreech and his "Wahrhafftige und umständliche Historie von denen schwedischen Gefangenen" (1725/1728)

Abstract

The article examines Curt Friedrich von Wreech’s book Wahrhafftige und umständliche Historie (1725/28) as a document of a particular situation of religious contact that is inaugurated by military conflict. It analyzes the repercussing dynamics displayed by Pietist ideas being imported to Russian Siberia by Swedish Prisoners of War during the Great Nordic War (1700–1721), and being brought back to Sweden after the release of the prisoners in 1721. Pietism in Siberia consolidated by contact with Orthodox Christians, Muslim Tartars and ‘pagan’ religious traditions as practiced by the Khanty. Via a long-distance transmission of religious ideas and practices, Pietism in Sweden gained momentum that evoked severe countermeasures by the Orthodox Lutheran church. The case of Carolean Pietism also shows that a predominant religious tradition (in this case the Lutheran Orthodoxy of Sweden’s state religion) might provide its heterodox counterpart with formal structures that might subversively be used as means of surviving, consolidation and even spreading.