The Quaker movement began in England in the 17th century. Small Quaker groups were planted in various places across Europe during this early period (For instance, see the Stephen Crisp article). Quakers in Europe outside Britain and Ireland are not very numerous although new groups have started in the former Soviet Union and successor countries. By far the largest national grouping of Quakers in Europe is in Britain. As of 2017, there were around 32,100 Quakers (Friends) in Europe.
By Country
Albania In 2017, there were 380 Friends in Albania within its one Evangelical (Gurneyite) meeting.
Belgium and Luxembourg Quaker Meetings are held in Brussels and Luxembourg, with occasional meetings in Antwerp and Ghent. The first Meeting for Business was held in Brussels in March 1975.Wuyts, Anita. (2004) From QIAR to QCEA: On the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Quaker Council for European Affairs 46. As of 2017, there were 106 Friends in the combined Monthly Meeting.
Quaker Council for European Affairs
The Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) is an international not-for-profit organisation which seeks to promote the values and political concerns of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) at the European level. It undertakes research and advocacy in the fields of peacebuilding and human rights policy, notably in relation to the European Union and the Council of Europe. Founded in 1979 by Quakers who worked in the European institutions, it is based in Brussels, Belgium, and is registered under Belgian law.
Quaker House Brussels Quaker House, located on the Square Ambiorix, Brussels, was acquired shortly after QCEA's foundation. Quaker House Brussels serves as the main Meeting House for Quakers in Belgium and Luxembourg. The building itself, built in the 1890s by the architect Georges Hobé, is a well-preserved example of Art Nouveau architecture and has protected heritage status.
Britain
There were 23,067 Quakers in the United Kingdom in 2017. There are 70 Area Meetings in Britain and 470 Local Meetings. The vast majority of British Quakers attend Meetings of unprogrammed worship.
Well-known British Quakers: See: List of British Quakers
Croatia There were 50 Evangelical (Gurneyite) Friends in Croatia in 2017.
Denmark In 2017, there were 30 Danish Friends in one Yearly Meeting.
Finland In 2017, there were 30 Finnish Friends in one Yearly Meeting.
France Well-known French Quakers include: Ferdinand Barlow, Stephen Grellet and Jeanne Henriette Louis.
In 2017, there was one Yearly Meeting in France made up of 160 Friends.
Georgia Friends House Georgia operates in Tblisi and has provided humanitarian assistance to refugees from the Russian invasion.
Germany Well-known German Quakers include: Elisabeth Abegg, Annot, John William Gerard de Brahm, Hans Einstein, Carl Hermann, John Theodore Merz, Marcello Pirani, and Gerhart von Schulze-Gävernitz.
The German Yearly Meeting is for both Germany and Austria. The meeting consisted of 453 Friends in 2017.
Hungary As of 2017, there were 4,012 Hungarian Friends in two meetings, including one Evangelical (Gurneyite) meeting.
Ireland
There were 2,046 Friends in Ireland in 2017. In addition to the main Ireland Yearly Meeting, there is one Evangelical meeting.
Italy Pier Cesare Bori was a well-known Italian Quaker.
There were only 16 Friends in Italy as of 2017 in two meetings, one being in Rome.
Netherlands
Seventeenth century Quakers first arrived in the Netherlands in 1655 when the nephew of William Ames and Margaret Fell, William Caton, took up residence in Amsterdam. The Netherlands were seen by Quakers as a refuge from persecution in England and they perceived themselves to have affinities with the Dutch Collegiants and Mennonites who had sought sanctuary in the country. However, Quakers still encountered persecution similar to that from which they had hoped to escape in England. This did not prevent the start of preaching tours however, and in 1661, Ames and Caton visited the County Palatine of the Rhine and met with Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine at Heidelberg.
William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania, had a maternal connection to the Netherlands and visited in 1671. He returned in 1677 with George Fox and Robert Barclay and at Walta Castle, their religious community at Wieuwerd in Friesland, he unsuccessfully tried to convert the similarly minded Labadists to Quakerism. The men also journeyed on the Rhine to Frankfurt, accompanied by the Amsterdam Quaker Jan Claus who was their translator. His brother, Jacob Claus, had Quaker books translated and published in Dutch and he later produced a map of Philadelphia.
Eighteenth century The attraction of a life free from persecution in the New World led to a gradual Dutch Quaker migration. English Quakers in Rotterdam were permitted to transport people and cargo by ship to English colonies without restriction and throughout the 18th century many Dutch Quakers emigrated to Pennsylvania. There were an estimated 500 Quaker families in Amsterdam in 1710, but by 1797 there were only seven Quakers left in the city. Isabella Maria Gouda (1745–1832), a granddaughter of Jan Claus, took care of the meeting house on Keizersgracht, but was evicted shortly afterwards.
The Quaker presence disappeared from Dutch life by the early 1800s until its re-emergence the 1920s, with Netherlands Yearly Meeting established in 1931.
Well-known Dutch Quakers include: Kees Boeke, Jan Claus, Jan de Hartog, and William Sewel.
Present Day In 2017, there were 115 Dutch Friends in one Yearly Meeting.
Norway
There is a vibrant history of Quakerism in Norway. Unlike in many other European countries Quaker communities survived migration and persecution for over three hundred years. Norway Yearly Meeting holds meetings in Bergen, Bø in Telemark, Kristiansand, Farsund, Mandal, Oslo, Stavanger, and Trondheim.
As of 2017, there were 200 Friends in the Norway Yearly Meeting.
Early beginnings Quakers first visited Norway in the 1650s when Quaker faith was still in its infancy. British Quakers record a ship stranded in Bergen in 1666 which was deporting Quakers to British colonies. Laurence Fullove, one of the Quakers aboard the ship reports that tracts were handed out to curious citizens of Bergen. That same year, in 1666, the first Quaker tract in Danish and Norwegian was published: John Higgin's The Lord's Message to All Persons who confess their faith in God.Aarek, Hans Eirik, (2002) "Quakers in Norway ", Tidsskriftet Kvekeren, (1) 4.
Nineteenth century The Society of Friends in Norway started in 1814, with the highest concentration of Quakers living in and around Stavanger. In 1819, Quakers Knut and Anne Halvorsen had their marriage recognised and were allowed to reside in Norway. Other named Quakers were allowed to live in the Stavanger area by the Norwegian Royal Decrees of 1826 and 1828, on the condition that they reported births, deaths, and marriages to the authorities and did not proselytise. During this time two Quakers, Elias Tastad and Knut Halvorsen, were prosecuted for burying their deceased family members in un-consecrated soil. During the 1825 mass migration of Norwegians to America, the numbers of Norwegian Quakers in the country diminished by a third.
In 1846, the Society of Friends became the first officially registered and legal religious society outside the state church of Norway. It was not until 1956 that other groups (the Methodists and Lammers society) were registered in a similar way. Throughout the 1840s, Norwegian Quakers were subject to the Act Relating to Dissenters (1845), which was intended to keep dissenting groups in small, isolated pockets of Norwegian society. Despite this, Quakerism continued to spread, and new meeting houses were built in Kvinesdal, Sauda, Røldal, Skjold, and Tromsø during the 1840s. Still a relatively small population, Quakers numbered 473 in the 1865 census.
During the latter half of the nineteenth century, Quakers were very active in the Norwegian peace movement, which threatened their status as an organisation. After the Napoleonic wars, Norway maintained conscription, "Forsvaret" and a number of Norwegian Quakers were punished for conscientious objection. One of the first recorded Norwegian Quaker conscientious objectors, Soren Olsen, was lashed for three days in 1848.Aarek, Hans Eirek (2007). "Conscription and Conscientious Objection in the Experience of Norwegian Friends", Quaker Studies, 11(1). In a wider act of objection, in 1898 the clerk of Stavanger meeting refused to submit the names of Quaker conscripts to the local authorities.
In 1898, the Norwegian Society of Friends became a private religious organisation, which meant that the organisation was no longer subject to the act on dissenters. The society accepted new members and was able to continue to carry out funerals and marriages.
Twentieth century
In 1909, a group of Norwegian Friends attended London Yearly Meeting and in 1920, several Norwegian Friends attended the first worldwide conference of Friends. The peace testimonies prompted a new movement of collections and campaigning in Norway, which has continued to the present day. In 1937, Ole Olden established the periodical Kvekeren which was issued across Scandinavian countries.
During World War II a number of Norwegian Quakers, including Olden and Lund, were imprisoned by the occupying German forces for resistance work. Lund was active in the Norwegian underground movement protecting Norwegian Jews and refugees and in 1947 she became the first member of the Oslo Worship Group to become a Quaker. Olden was later nominated for the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize. Lindgrov School was established by Norwegian Friends in 1959, contributing ideas to national policies concerning training and work as aspects of care for people with learning disabilities. In 1975, a Monthly Meeting was established in Kristiansand.
Notable Quakers Well-known Norwegian Quakers include Elise M. Boulding, Asbjørn Kloster, and Sigrid Helliesen Lund.
Poland Quakers arrived in Poland during the Interwar period (1918–1939) to assist with humanitarian aid for the newly re-independent nation.
As of 2017, there were only 20 Polish Friends divided between three small meetings.
Romania As of 2017, there were 920 Quakers in Romania, most of whom belonging to the Evangelical (Gurneyite) branch of Quakerism.
Russia There are weekly Quaker meetings in Moscow (Monthly Meeting) and meetings by arrangement in St Petersburg. As of 2017, there were 26 Friends in Russia.
The history of Quakerism in Russia is long and diverse, with multiple references and obscure connections to British Quakerism throughout Russian history.
First Quakerism and Persecution The first Quaker connection to Russia came in 1656 when British Quaker George Fox sent an epistle to the Tsar of Muscovy Aleksei Mikhailovich. In 1697, Peter the Great visited England as part of the Grand Embassy where he was presented with Barclay's Apology and other Quaker works. p. 251. Peter met with William Penn and attended meetings for worship whilst in England. Despite these initial connections, during the latter seventeenth century in Russia, the name "Quaker" was one of a number of pejorative terms for religious individuals who challenged earthly powers in the name of personal experience of the divine. Records show that Quakers were prosecuted in Russia as early as 1689. Throughout the eighteenth century, religious dissenters called "Quaker maidens" were exiled to Siberia for their beliefs.Gur'ev, V. V. (1919) Russian Maidens who suffered as Quakers: a chapter in the religious history of Russia in the early XVIIIth century, London: Headley Bros. In 1779, the Ecclesiastical Dictionary listed "Quakers" as "nothing else but crowds of deranged people and enthusiasts who are possessed".Prodolzhenie Tserkovnago Slovaria, 122–126.