Uttenreuth Baptist

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The Uttenreuth Anabaptists were a movement initiated by the Anabaptist messenger Hans Hut , which had its center in the Middle Franconian village of Uttenreuth . It only existed for a short time. From 1530 onwards, some of its members were among the so-called Uttenreuth dreamers , whose origins can be traced back to the Uttenreuth blacksmith Hans Schmid .

history

Hans Hut: initiator of the Uttenreuth Anabaptist community

In February 1527, the Baptist missionary Hans Hut also visited the village of Uttenreuth near Erlangen . During this stay, which lasted only one evening, Hans Hut preached in the house of the married couple Fritz and Margret Strigel to a meeting of ten or twelve Uttenreuthers. This meeting was prepared by the brothers Michael, Hans and Marx Maier from Altenerlangen .

Hans Huts christening book

The course of this evening as well as the content of Hans Hut's proclamation were described by the participants in later interrogations largely in agreement. Afterwards, Hans Hut briefly greeted those who had gathered, then “pulled out” a booklet and read from it. In the following sermon, Hut then presented his view of Christian baptism : "When they [the assembled] renounce sins and are converted, he will draw them as if they would suffer persecution." To his call, the "sign" of the To receive baptism, everyone in attendance followed, three men and seven women. After the baptism, Hut celebrated the Lord's Supper with his baptized people and then said goodbye. So far, we can only speculate about the motives that led Hans Hut to Uttenreuth and here to the house of the Strigel couple. The historian Gottfried Seebaß suspects relationships between Hut and some Uttenreuthers that could stem from the Peasants' War . According to this, Fritz Strigel would perhaps be "that 'long Fritz' who is named in a letter of apology from the community after the Peasants' War." There could also have been family connections to a certain Hans Strigel, whose participation in the peasant uprising is certain. In any case, there is evidence that the Eggenhof farmer Hans Gruber and his two sons were among the rebels. All three were baptized by Hans Hut. Hans Gruber's son Jörg developed into one of the most important Anabaptist missionaries in the Franconian region.

Church life

A building in Uttenreuth that already existed at the time of the Anabaptist community: Gasthaus Schwarzer Adler (built in 1516)

In the following months, the young congregation came together for joint church services, mainly on the high holidays. Documented meeting points were the Strigel house and a mill on the outskirts of Uttenreuth. The miller couple and two foreign young men who worked in the mill also belonged to the Uttenreuth Anabaptist community. The protocols of the later interrogations can be used - albeit only very imprecisely - to reconstruct the course of the worship meetings. Then the simple celebration began and ended with a song that was composed by Hans Hut and given to the community when it was founded. This song has the title: We thank you, Her der eeren, that you reassure us all . It celebrates the Lord's Supper and its content probably offered a simple liturgical setting for the celebration of the breaking of bread . The worship service of the Uttenreuth Anabaptist community also included reading a passage from the Bible. In an interrogation in December 1527, an Anabaptist reported about it: “Diseurs read the will and asked to be obedient.” There was also space in the worship meetings to respond to what was heard and to discuss the interpretation - but always "with the aim of achieving the greatest possible agreement in the views of the brothers and sisters."

In addition to the festive church services, to which acquaintances were invited, people met for smaller, mostly spontaneous house meetings during the week. Such gatherings often arose from everyday business and from mutual visits on specific family occasions. Being together in the village's spinning rooms was also used as a good opportunity to talk to neighbors about spiritual issues. So one discussed with some of them - albeit unsuccessfully - about the community order developed by Hans Hut: “Some of them went to in afterwards, heard that they talked about it [about the community code], but were contradicted and disordered want to accept. "

The attempt of two Uttenreuth Anabaptists to win the early knife Anton Schad for the Anabaptist views was put on record. They handed over two books printed in Nuremberg.

Further developments

In the second half of 1527 the “Baptist Apostle” Georg Volk paid the young congregation several visits. Volk, who is also called Jörg Volkmeier in various sources, originally came from Haina like his teacher Hans Hut . His first visit to Uttenreuth took place at the beginning of August. The people were on their way to Augsburg , where the local Anabaptist congregation had invited to a supraregional meeting. The meeting, which took place from August 20th to 24th and was supposed to settle internal Anabaptist doctrinal disputes, became a mission conference, which sent the synodals as Anabaptist messengers and assigned them regional fields of work. Because most of the Anabaptist missionaries sent out were captured and executed in the following months, this Anabaptist meeting went down in church history as the Augsburg Synod of Martyrs . Georg Volk also died a martyr in Bamberg in January 1528 .

After his participation in the Augsburg Conference, Georg Volk returned to the Baiersdorf office and met the messenger Georg Nespitzer, who was in charge of the mission in Franconia . The Uttenreuth Baptist Jakob Leitner, who was also one of the participants in the synod, had Nespitzer, who was also called Jörg von Passau , guided from Augsburg to his home village. The people and Nespitzer appeared together for a short time and celebrated the Lord's Supper with the brothers and sisters of the Uttenreuth community.

Through Georg Volks's stays in and around Uttenreuth, the young community experienced internal and external growth. Branch communities arose in Rosenbach , Weiher and on the former Einödhof (and later Gut) Eggenhof . Popular preaching also resulted in a number of baptisms . Among those baptized were Hans Jobst from Rosenbach, Kunigunde Zeltner from Weiher, the Staffelstein day laborer Hans Zürl, who sought refuge in Uttenreuth shortly after his baptism, and Hans Schmid, who later initiated the Uttenreuth dreamers .

End of the Uttenreuth Anabaptist community

On New Year's Eve from 1527 to 1528, the Ansbach bailiff Hans von Seckendorf arrested 20 Uttenreuth Anabaptists. Among them were Conz Beck , Marx Meier and the aforementioned Fritz Strigel. After extensive interrogations, the records of which have been handed down, they were released with various admonitions. After that, the news about the Uttenreuth Anabaptist community fell silent. It was not until 1530 that she started talking again after a number of her (former?) Members, including the married couple Fritz and Margret Strigel and Marx Meier, had turned to the dreamers' community initiated by Hans Schmid.

literature

  • Günther Bauer: Beginnings of Anabaptist Church Formations in Franconia , Volume XLIII in the series Individual Works from the Church History of Bavaria (publisher: Association for Bavarian Church History ), Nuremberg 1966
  • Wolfgang Schäufele: The missionary awareness and work of the Anabaptists , Neukirchen 1966, p. 234ff
  • Günther Bauer: Beginnings of Anabaptist Congregation Formations in Franconia , Volume 43 in the series Individual Works from the Church History of Bavaria (published by the Association for Bavarian Church History), Nuremberg 1966.
  • Gottfried Seebaß: Müntzer's legacy. Work, Life and Theology of Hans Huts , Volume 73 in the series Sources and Research on Reformation History (Ed. Irene Dingel on behalf of the Association for Reformation History ), Gütersloh 2002, ISBN 3-579-01758-6 , pp. 239–245
  • Anselm Schubert : The dream of the Lord's Day: The "dreamers of Uttenreuth" and the apocalyptic Anabaptism , in the journal Archive for Reformation History, Volume 97, Gütersloh 2006, pp. 106-136
  • Hans-Jürgen Goertz : Dreams, Revelations, Visions . In: Ders .: Radicality of the Reformation. Essays and treatises , Göttingen 2007, pp. 164–187

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For the exact dating of this visit see Gottfried Seebaß: Müntzers Erbe. Work, Life and Theology of Hans Huts , Volume 73 in the series Sources and Research on Reformation History (Ed. Irene Dingel on behalf of the Association for Reformation History ), Gütersloh 2002, pp. 239f
  2. ↑ The figures vary. Anselm Schubert (Anselm Schubert: The Dream of the Lord's Day: The “Dreamers of Uttenreuth” and the apocalyptic Anabaptism , in the magazine Archive for Reformation History , Volume 97, p. 110) speaks of 12 participants.
  3. ↑ Anselm Schubert: The day of the dream of the Lord. The “Uttenreuther Dreamers” and the apocalyptic Anabaptism , in the magazine Archive for Reformation History, No. 97/2006, p. 110
  4. ↑ The “little book” probably means the so-called “red book” written by Hut. It contained a short catechism , a prayer of thanks and a concordance ; see Karl Schornbaum: Sources for the History of Anabaptists , Volume II: Markgraftum Brandenburg (Bavaria I. Department) , Leipzig 1934, pp. 50–57
  5. ^ For example, the statement by Fritz Strigel; see Karl Schornbaum: Sources for the history of the Anabaptists , Volume II: Markgraftum Brandenburg (Bavaria I. Department) , Leipzig 1934, p. 80 (82: Confessions of the Baiersdorf prisoners. 1528 )
  6. ↑ From an interrogation report; quoted from Wolfgang Schäufele: The missionary awareness and work of the Anabaptists , Neukirchen 1966, p. 235
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Schäufele: The missionary awareness and work of the Anabaptists , Neukirchen 1966, p. 236
  8. ↑ Quoted from Gottfried Seebaß: Peasants' War and Anabaptism in Franconia , in: The Reformation and their outsiders. Collected essays and lectures (edited for the 60th birthday of the author by Irene Dingel), Göttingen 1997, ISBN 3-525-58165-3 , pp. 200f
  9. ↑ Gottfried Seebaß: Peasant War and Anabaptism in Franconia , in: The Reformation and their outsiders. Collected essays and lectures (edited for the 60th birthday of the author by Irene Dingel), Göttingen 1997, p. 201
  10. ^ Karl Schornbaum: Sources for the history of the Anabaptists , Volume II: Markgraftum Brandenburg (Bavaria I. Department) , Leipzig 1934, p. 19ff
  11. ^ Günther Bauer: Beginnings of Anabaptist Church Formations in Franconia , Volume XLIII in the series Individual Works from the Church History of Bavaria (publisher: Association for Bavarian Church History ), Nuremberg 1966, p. 61
  12. ↑ The song can be found printed by Philipp Wackernagel : The German hymn from the earliest times to the beginning of the XVII. Century , Volume III, Leipzig 1870, p. 444. There it is, however, attributed to the reformer Thomas Müntzer according to the source information in Salminger's hymn book . For Hans Hut's authorship see therefore Rudolf Wolkan: The songs of the Anabaptists. A contribution to German and Dutch literary and church history , Osnabrück 1983 (reprint), p. 15
  13. ↑ On the service of the reader (lector) in Anabaptist communities, see Heinold Fast : On the tradition of the reading office among the Upper German Anabaptists . In: Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter No. 54/1997, pp. 61-68
  14. ↑ “These teachers read them the [Old or New] Testament and exhorted them to be obedient to God”; quoted from Günther Bauer: Beginnings of Anabaptist Church Formations in Franconia , Volume XLIII in the series Individual Works from the Church History of Bavaria (Ed. Association for Bavarian Church History ), Nuremberg 1966, p. 61
  15. ^ Günther Bauer: Beginnings of Anabaptist Church Formations in Franconia , Volume XLIII in the series Individual Works from the Church History of Bavaria (publisher: Association for Bavarian Church History ), Nuremberg 1966, p. 61
  16. ↑ “A number of neighbors also went to them and heard that they had talked about it; but they were against it and did not want to accept their order. ”- Quoted from Günther Bauer: Beginnings of Anabaptist Church Formations in Franconia , Volume XLIII in the series Individual Works from the Church History of Bavaria (Ed. Association for Bavarian Church History ), Nuremberg 1966, p. 58
  17. ^ Karl Schornbaum: Sources for the history of the Anabaptists , Volume II: Markgraftum Brandenburg (Bavaria I. Department) , Leipzig 1934, p. 16ff
  18. ^ Hans Guderian: The Anabaptists in Augsburg. Their history and their legacy. A contribution to the 2000 year celebration of the city of Augsburg , Pfaffenhofen 1984, ISBN 3-7787-2063-5 , p. 43
  19. ↑ GAMEO: Jörg Volk (d. 1528) ; accessed on November 28, 2014
  20. ↑ This joint appearance must be dated to September 1527; see Günther Bauer: Beginnings of Anabaptist Church Formations in Franconia , Volume XLIII in the series Individual Works from the Church History of Bavaria (publisher: Association for Bavarian Church History ), Nuremberg 1966, p. 59, note 11
  21. ^ Günther Bauer: Beginnings of Anabaptist Church Formations in Franconia , Volume XLIII in the series Individual Works from the Church History of Bavaria (publisher: Association for Bavarian Church History ), Nuremberg 1966, p. 59, note 10
  22. ↑ Anselm Schubert: The dream of the day of the Lord: The "dreamers of Uttenreuth" and the apocalyptic Anabaptism , in the journal Archive for Reformation History, Volume 97, 2006 (pp. 106-136), pp. 110f
  23. ↑ Anselm Schubert: The dream of the day of the Lord: The "dreamers of Uttenreuth" and the apocalyptic Anabaptism , in the journal Archive for Reformation History, Volume 97, 2006 (pp. 106-136), p. 111