Danzig Notables -- Paul Swietlicki

Paul Swietlicki was born in Osterode in East Prussia in 1699. After graduating from the Danzig Gymnasium (where he had learned French and English), he studied theology in Rostock and Wittenberg. In 1724 he traveled to Holland and in 1725 to Paris to continue his studies. In Paris he became closely acquainted with leading intellectuals, including the Benedictine Montfauson and Abbot Bignon. He found a patron in the Swedish ambassador to the French court, Freiherr von Gedda, who wrote him letters of recommendation to England in 1726. There he became the teacher of the young Counts von der Lippe, a post that enabled him to stay there for two years. After a brief position as personal preacher for Baron Sparre in Paris, he accepted the call to the Polish-speaking church of St. Anne in Danzig in 1730 and simultaneously became a professor at the Gymnasium. When he became deacon at Luise Kulmus's church, St. Johann's ,in 1734, he resigned his professorship. In 1735 Swietlicki married Louisa Florentine Sonntag (born around 1710 in Danzig), and in 1750 he became pastor of St. Johann's.

Although he veiled his views at first, Swietlicki gradually introduced a new, rationalist tendency in theology in Danzig. He granted reading the bible only moral not miraculous effects, opposed attacks by the Spiritual Ministry (Geistliches Ministerium) on pietists and other non-Lutherans, called any spiritual confession where money exchanged hands a Zollbude (toll booth), and despite strong opposition from his colleagues became Godfather of the child of the English preacher, Peter Hay. These views earned him the antagonism of the preacher at St. James, Kickebusch. Eventually, in 1736, the City Council imposed public silence on their quarrell, and when Kickebusch broke it he was removed to another town and banished from Danzig.

Swietlicki was also interested in natural science. He encouraged Daniel Gralath (son-in-law of Jacob Theodor Klein, husband of Juliane) in his experiments with electicity in the Leyden bottle. In 1744 he was asked by the Naturforschende Gesellschaft in Danzig to conduct experiments for them on air pressure and electricity. He died in 1756.

[Gotthilf Löschin. Geschichte Danzigs von der ätesten bis zur neuesten Zeit. 2 vols. Danzig: F.W. Ewert, 1822 and 1823.