Tychowo (german: Wendisch Tychow until 1937, then simply ''Tychow'') is a

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...

in the administrative district of Gmina Sławno, within

Sławno County __NOTOC__ Sławno County ( pl, powiat sławieński) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in West Pomeranian Voivodeship, north-western Poland, on the Baltic coast. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result ...

West Pomeranian Voivodeship The West Pomeranian Voivodeship, also known as the West Pomerania Province, is a voivodeship (province) in northwestern Poland. Its capital and largest city is Szczecin. Its area equals 22 892.48 km² (8,838.84 sq mi), and in 2021, it was i ...

, in north-western Poland. It lies approximately east of Sławno and north-east of the regional capital

Szczecin Szczecin (, , german: Stettin ; sv, Stettin ; Latin: ''Sedinum'' or ''Stetinum'') is the capital and largest city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in northwestern Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea and the German border, it is a major s ...

History

For the history of the region, see

History of Pomerania The history of Pomerania starts shortly before 1000 AD with ongoing conquests by newly arrived Polans rulers. Before that, the area was recorded nearly 2000 years ago as Germania, and in modern-day times Pomerania is split between Germany and Pol ...

. Sigurdshof (today's Waszkowo), an outlying estate (Vorwerk/fołwark) became an outpost of the secret education of pastors for the Nazi-opponent fraction of the united

Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union The Prussian Union of Churches (known under multiple other names) was a major Protestant church body which emerged in 1817 from a series of decrees by Frederick William III of Prussia that united both Lutheran and Reformed denominations in Pr ...

, represented by the

Confessing Church The Confessing Church (german: link=no, Bekennende Kirche, ) was a movement within German Protestantism during Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi German E ...

and its brethren councils, persecuted by the Nazis during the struggle of the churches. In summer 1939 the Ewald Graf von Kleist-Wendisch Tychow offered his unused outlying estate Sigurdshof to Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

pastor and theologian and head of an underground

seminary A seminary, school of theology, theological seminary, or divinity school is an educational institution for educating students (sometimes called ''seminarians'') in scripture, theology, generally to prepare them for ordination to serve as clergy, ...

(Sammelvikariat) for training Confessing-Church pastors, for his seminary.''Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Pfarrer, Berlin-Charlottenburg 9, Marienburger Allee 43: Begleitheft zur Ausstellung'', corr. a. ext. ed., Kuratorium Bonhoeffer Haus (ed.), Berlin: Erinnerungs- und Begegnungsstätte Bonhoeffer Haus, ²1996, p. 51. No ISBN. The seminary then moved over from

Groß Schlönwitz Gross or Groß in German is the correct spelling of the surname under German orthographic rules. In Switzerland, the name is spelled Gross. Some Germans and Austrians also use the spelling with "ss" instead of "ß". It is a surname of German, Pru ...

. The

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...

forcibly shut down the seminary in March 1940.

References

Villages in Sławno County {{Sławno-geo-stub