Main board: Bleiben und Leiden – Remaining and Suffering

In search of freedom for their own faith, many Anabaptists sooner or later decided of necessity to emigrate and flee. But not all of them.

A Zurich Anabaptist woman is led away before the eyes of her children in 1637 (Jan Luyken, copperplate engraving, in Tieleman van Braght, Der blutige Schauplatz oder Märtyrerspiegel der Taufgesinnten oder wehrlosen Christen, Pirmasens 1780, 797).

Some disputed the right of the authorities to expel them from their homeland, in which they saw themselves placed by God. They argued with Psalm 24: "The earth belongs to God, and all that is in it" - therefore the "gracious lords" in Bern had no right to expel them, and that is why they stayed.

So these people tried to live what they believed to the best of their ability. And many were willing to pay a high price for it.

It was a fine line between admirable courage and narrow-mindedness. But apparently their example had a credible and convincing effect on many people of their time. Despite persecution, more and more people joined Anabaptism in the Bern region between 1650 and 1720.

Of course, this also fueled the repression, and the prisons filled up. But running away now, just to save their own skin, was out of the question for these women and men. And so they held out, stayed and suffered - and hoped. Even here in the darkness of the cells at Trachselwald Castle.

In the midst of external bondage, they saw in this abiding and suffering their path to freedom, to which they felt called and to which they also invited others.