Tychowo t is a village

Village

A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...

 in the administrative district of Gmina Sławno, within Sławno County, West Pomeranian Voivodeship

West Pomeranian Voivodeship

West Pomeranian Voivodeship, , is a voivodeship in northwestern Poland. It borders on Pomeranian Voivodeship to the east, Greater Poland Voivodeship to the southeast, Lubusz Voivodeship to the south, the German federal-state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania to the west, and the Baltic Sea to the north...

, in north-western Poland. It lies approximately 7 kilometres (4 mi) east of Sławno and 179 km (111 mi) north-east of the regional capital Szczecin

Szczecin

Szczecin , is the capital city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in Poland. It is the country's seventh-largest city and the largest seaport in Poland on the Baltic Sea. As of June 2009 the population was 406,427....

.

History

Before 1945 the area was part of Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. For the history of the region, see History of Pomerania

History of Pomerania

The history of Pomerania dates back more than 10,000 years. Settlement in the area started by the end of the Vistula Glacial Stage, about 13,000 years ago. Archeological traces have been found of various cultures during the Stone and Bronze Age, of Veneti and Germanic peoples during the Iron Age...

.

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

United and uniting churches

United and uniting churches are churches formed from the merger or other form of union of two or more different Protestant denominations.Perhaps the oldest example of a united church is found in Germany, where the Evangelical Church in Germany is a federation of Lutheran, United and Reformed...

 Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union, represented by the Confessing Church

Confessing Church

The Confessing Church was a Protestant schismatic church in Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to nazify the German Protestant church.-Demographics:...

 and its brethren councils, persecuted by the Nazis during the struggle of the churches

Kirchenkampf

Kirchenkampf is a German term that translates as "struggle of the churches" or "church struggle" in English. The term is sometimes used ambiguously, and may refer to one or more of the following different church struggles:...

.

In summer 1939 the Ewald Graf von Kleist-Wendisch Tychow offered his unused outlying estate Sigurdshof to Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and martyr. He was a participant in the German resistance movement against Nazism and a founding member of the Confessing Church. He was involved in plans by members of the Abwehr to assassinate Adolf Hitler...

, Protestant pastor and theologian and head of an underground seminary

Seminary

A seminary, theological college, or divinity school is an institution of secondary or post-secondary education for educating students in theology, generally to prepare them for ordination as clergy or for other ministry...

 (Sammelvikariat) for training Confessing-Church pastors, for his seminary. The seminary then moved over from Groß Schlönwitz. The Gestapo

Gestapo

The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...

forcibly shut down the seminary in March 1940.