Augustin Bader

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Augustin Bader (* around 1495 in Augsburg ; † March 30, 1530 in Stuttgart ) was an Augsburg Anabaptist leader and chiliast .

Life

Nothing is known about Augustin Bader's youth and origins. He was probably born shortly before 1500 in Augsburg. In 1516 he is mentioned for the first time as a weaver journeyman; he is also known as a furrier . In 1517 he appears in the files as a house owner, which indicates his marriage.

The Baptist leader

Like his wife Sabina Bader , he was presumably baptized in the winter of 1526/27 by Jakob Gross and joined the Augsburg Anabaptist community. Although his name is not mentioned, Bader's participation in the Augsburg Synod of Martyrs from August 20 to 24, 1527 can be assumed. On September 15, 1527, a secret meeting of the Anabaptist community through the city was raided . Among those arrested was Jakob Gross and Hans Hut, as well as Bader's wife Sabina. Since after this wave of arrests the most important leaders of the Augsburg Anabaptists were either captured or banished from the city, Augustin Bader was appointed head of the Augsburg Anabaptists at the suggestion of Leonhard Freisleben. However, a few days after his election, he was also arrested. Unlike his wife, he formally renounced Anabaptism to avoid expulsion from the city. As a result, Bader secretly led a large number of meetings and conducted believing baptisms. From the spring of 1528 he also held larger meetings outside the city in the open air to prepare the Anabaptists for the Last Judgment , which Hans Hut had predicted for Pentecost in 1528 . Via Eitelhan's long coat , Bader had obtained a copy of Hut's “Missionsbüchlein” and was thus informed about his apocalyptic teachings and the calculation of the end times. When the Augsburg council launched a second wave of arrests in February 1528, Bader was able to evade capture by cunning. He evaded Kaufbeuren for a short time to prepare the local Anabaptist community for the end times. When he secretly returned to Augsburg, the community was under the direction of Georg Nespitzer . There were differences between Bader and Nespitzer regarding the end times. There was a threat of a split in the Anabaptist community and Bader being voted out of office. Bader then left the city and went to the Anabaptist community of Esslingen am Neckar . From there he moved to Strasbourg with the Anabaptists Gall Vischer and Hans Koeller, who were also expelled from Augsburg , to coordinate with the brothers there about the end times.

the Prophet

In Strasbourg he met the peasant war preacher Oswald Leber, who, in accordance with the Jewish messianic revelation by Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi, predicted the year 1530 as the date for the return of the Messiah. Despite this new prediction, Bader returned to Augsburg on Pentecost 1528 to see the fulfillment of Hut's prophecy. When Bader arrived in Augsburg, he found the Anabaptist community almost completely destroyed. At Easter 1528, the majority of the Anabaptists (88 people) were arrested and then driven out of the city. More arrests followed. Their chief Hans Leupold had been executed as a deterrent. The remaining Anabaptist leaders agreed on a period of reflection and decided on a baptism moratorium . During this uncertain time Bader hid with a like-minded comrade on the attic and waited for new revelations. In July and August Bader experienced three visions in his hiding place, on which he based his own doctrine of the “great change” that, in his opinion, would occur at Easter 1530. The visions gave him the certainty that he was called to act as a prophet of the approaching end times. Towards the end of 1528 Bader left Augsburg again and appeared at various Anabaptist meetings, where he spread his visions and tried to find supporters for the movement he had founded. Via Esslingen am Neckar, he went to a meeting in Schönberg near Geroldseck to reveal himself to a group of confidants as a prophet. Then he traveled back to Augsburg and tried to sell his property there in order to create a material basis for his new community. At the end of 1528 Bader appeared at an Anabaptist meeting in Teufen in Appenzell . At this meeting he openly renounced the Anabaptism in the spirit of the baptismal standstill decided in Augsburg. He had received another order from God. After the meeting in Teufen, Bader appears to have attended an Anabaptist meeting in Nuremberg in January 1529 . Then the traces are lost until July 1529.

The king

After Sabina Bader succeeded in selling her house in Augsburg, Bader moved with his heavily pregnant wife and their three children to Westerstetten near Ulm in order to prepare for the coming end times. Together with the von Gastl Miller's family, they found accommodation with a miller for more than three months at the end of July 1529. During this time the youngest son of the Bader family was born. The group moved from Westerstetten to the hamlet of Lautern near Blaubeuren and rented a house there from a miller. On St. Martin's Day 1529, the other followers of Bader (Hans Koeller, Gall Vischer and Oswald Leber) and their families arrived from Basel in Lautern to wait together for the "great change" and in a kind of mission procession to learn Hut's teachings from the last judgment to convey. For the eschatological mission, Bader had costumes specially designed by him from the community fund. The preparations also included making contact with Jews from Leipheim and Günzburg in order to have them confirm the end of the day.

At the end of November, Bader's apprenticeship was significantly expanded by the vision of his comrade Gall Vischer. Vischer stated that he saw in a dream face how her house had opened and royal insignia had descended on Bader. Bader interpreted Vischer's dream as a prediction for his future role as king in the millennium and for the royal descent of his youngest son, who was just born. As a direct consequence of this vision, Bader and his companions ordered the royal insignia from goldsmiths in Ulm. The insignia included a dagger, a cup and a gold braid as a belt. They then had a sword and dagger gilded. In addition, the production of a small crown, a chain and a scepter was commissioned. Bader could not fill his role as future king for long, because he and his followers were arrested as early as the third week of January 1530.

The martyr

On the basis of the trial files, the arrests, interrogations with torture and executions of the millenarist group around Augustin Bader can be reconstructed quite well. It is not known who reported the whereabouts of Bader and his Anabaptist community in Stuttgart. After the suspicion became known, the authorities sent a representative in mid-January 1530 to arrest the suspect community together with the Obervogt von Blaubeuren. A total of 15 people (five men, two pregnant women and eight mostly young children) were taken prisoner. The rest of the community property, the royal regalia, the costumes and other property of the group were confiscated. Only Sabina Bader escaped arrest by jumping out of the window. The arrested adults were distributed to different prisons and the children to different institutions.

Augustin Bader was sent to Stuttgart prison, where he was subjected to a first interrogation on January 27, 1530. Bader freely gave information about his teaching and his calling to be king in the coming millennial kingdom. At the same time, the other arrestees and other witnesses were questioned. After the first amicable questioning, those arrested were subjected to the embarrassing questioning . The authorities were less interested in Bader's religious motives than in his political attitudes. In the run-up to the Augsburg Reichstag , Bader was hyped up to be an agent of the expelled Duke Ulrich von Württemberg . Bader was not primarily accused of heresy , but rather he was accused of planned rebellion. On March 10, 1530, Augustin Bader was interrogated one last time under severe torture. He refused to renounce to the last. His hope of surviving at least until the "big change" was not fulfilled.

Although the authorities were unable to extract a specific plan of the uprising from him despite the torture, he was sentenced to death for rioting . On March 30, he and his followers were executed for political unrest in Stuttgart, Tübingen and Nürtingen . Bader was taken through the streets of Stuttgart in a cart and pinched in each quarter with red-hot pliers. At the place of execution, the executioner pressed a glowing crown on his head. He was then beheaded with his own gilded sword and then burned at the stake .

Christening succession

The line of baptismal succession goes back to Augustin Bader via Jakob Gross (winter 1526/27), Balthasar Hubmaier (Easter 1525), Wilhelm Reublin (January 1525), Jörg Blaurock (January 1525) to Konrad Grebel (January 1525). The dates in brackets indicate the respective baptism date. Evidence of this can be found in the biography articles of the persons mentioned.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On Bader's biography cf. Schubert: Anabaptism and Kabbalah (2008), pp. 33–69, 104–202.
  2. ↑ Langenmantel was banished from Augsburg on October 24, 1527. Bader met Langenmantel in a hiding place in Leitersheim . Schubert: Anabaptism and Kabbalah (2008), p. 55ff.
  3. ^ Schubert: Anabaptism and Kabbalah (2008), p. 66ff.
  4. ^ Voss: Controversial Redeemers (2007), p. 143.
  5. ^ Schubert: "MennLex V"
  6. ^ Schubert: Anabaptism and Kabbalah (2008), p. 109ff.
  7. ^ Schubert: Anabaptism and Kabbalah (2008), pp. 123ff.
  8. ↑ Schubert: Anabaptism and Kabbalah (2008), pp. 125ff.
  9. ^ Schubert: Anabaptism and Kabbalah (2008), p. 131f.
  10. ↑ Schubert: Anabaptism and Kabbalah (2008), p. 141.
  11. ↑ Schubert: Anabaptism and Kabbalah (2008), pp. 142ff.
  12. ^ Voss: Controversial Redeemers (2007), p. 147ff.
  13. ^ Bossert: Augustin Bader (1913/1914)
  14. ↑ Gustav Bossert: Sources for the history of the Anabaptists. Vol. 1, Duchy of Württemberg, Leipzig 1930, pp. 921-988
  15. ^ Adolf Laube: Pamphlets from the Peasants' War to the Anabaptist Empire (1525-1535). Berlin 1992, pp. 984-996.
  16. ↑ An interrogation protocol can be found in Kasimir Walchner, Johann Bodent: Biographie des Truchsessen Georg III. von Waldpurg , Constanz 1832, p. 362ff (Appendix LI); on-line
  17. ^ Schubert: MennLex V
  18. ↑ According to a report from 1530. Schubert: Täufertum und Kabbalah (2008), pp. 201f.
personal data
SURNAME Bader, Augustin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Augsburg Anabaptist leader and Chiliast
DATE OF BIRTH around 1495
PLACE OF BIRTH augsburg
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1530
Place of death Stuttgart