Stadtporträt: Serey (Seirijai)

By Al Hirsch

Serey (Lithuanian Seirijai) is a town in southern Lithuania near the city of Alytus that has a most interesting history.

The Serey Lutheran church was one of the “daughter” churches of the Mariampol Lutheran church and shared the same pastor.

In 1511, the Lithuanian King Sigismund granted a very large area of land between the Nemunas

River and the town of Lazdijai to a nobleman named Jurgis Radziwill. Radziwill founded the

Serey manor which grew into the town of Serey . In 1669, upon the death of Boguslovas

Radziwill, the Serey lands went to his daughter Ludwika Karolina Radziwill which in 1681 she

donated to her husband, Prince Ludwig of Brandenburg. Upon his death in 1687, the Serey

lands went to Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia. Thus, Serey became a royal county of

Prussia in the heart of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1691 to 1795.

In 1584, Nicholas Radzwill built a new masonry church in Serey for the Calvinists living there.

Over the years, this church building would change hands many times from Calvinist to Lutheran

to Calvinist to Catholic. Currently, this church is Catholic. In the early 1900s, as the Protestant

population in the Serey area decreased through emigration, the Protestants exchanged their

masonry church for a much smaller Catholic church in Serey that no longer exists.

During the 1800s, two Protestant congregations shared the Serey church: the Evangelical

Lutherans and the Reformed Lutherans (Calvinists). Complete church records for both of these

Serey congregations exist in the Polish Archives from 1826 to 1912 in the “duplikat” records

which the clergy were required to make for the government authorities. There also exists a

record of an index of births recorded in Serey from 1800 to 1890, but the actual church birth

records corresponding to these births from 1800 to 1826 are missing.

Starting in 1852, the Evangelical Lutheran congregation began conversion to the Reformed

Lutheran congregation, with the Evangelical Lutheran records gradually decreasing and

eventually disappearing. Upon moving from the Serey area to the Mariampol area around

the year 1900, those Evangelical Lutherans who had converted to Reformed Lutheran in Serey

then re-converted to Evangelical Lutheran.

An analysis of the Serey church records reveals that many people came as “colonists” from

East Prussia during the period 1795 to 1807 when Serey was then part of New East Prussia.

Many of the colonists were Salzburgers who came to East Prussia in 1732 and later emigrated

to Serey – perhaps because of the presence of a Protestant church in Serey since 1584.

Improvements to Online Index + New Records Coming.