Main board: Passion in Bern

New Anabaptist hunters appeared, hardly much better than the first, but more cautious and shrewder. Quietly they grabbed.

The beaten and humiliated prisoners lay in the tower of Trachselwald, their feet locked in heavy chains, without straw, without blankets on the bare floor with water and bread. The women wept, the beaten men moaned, but at daybreak Frau Anna sang the song.

It was strange how this Anabaptist song gave her new strength, and it was also comforting how the voices of her fellow prisoners rang out from all the prison cells, so that at last the whole tower sang and the song swelled into a mighty chorale.

Walter Laedrach

More information:

An Anabaptist novel about the bailiff Johann Friedrich Willading

In the Anabaptist novel "Passion in Bern", the lifes, loves and sufferings of the Flückiger family and their friends are described, with many conversations among bailiffs, pastors and Anabaptists. Based on the family history, the persecution, capture, deportation and death of many Anabaptists are recounted. Anna Flückiger, her daughter Vreneli and her great love Peter Hertig are at the center of the events.

Anna is arrested by the persecutors of the Anabaptists and brought to Trachselwald.

«The beaten and humiliated prisoners lay in the tower of Trachselwald, their feet locked in heavy chains, without straw, without blankets on the bare floor with water and bread. The women wept, the beaten men moaned, but at daybreak Frau Anna sang the song:

My harp is broken
Whenever I want to sing,
The gloom has fallen on me,
So it will not sound.
But to whom shall I complain,
But to my dear God,
He does not let me despair,
He helps out of all distress.

It was strange how this Anabaptist song gave her new strength, and it was also comforting how the voices of her fellow prisoners rang out from all the prison cells, so that at last the whole tower sang and the song swelled into a mighty chorale. (…)

Now a prison guard appeared in the tower and told the prisoners to be silent, using foul language. "With your damned bawling you wake up the bailiff for me, and if I hear one more sound, I'll beat you so that you can be buried in the Anabaptist hole whenever you like, and no longer need to march to Berne!"

The first cell the brute entered fell silent.

"Wasn’t that Peter Hertig and Lüthi von der Neunegg who stopped singing just now?" Luzia Wyman asked her fellow sister.

"My God and Father," groaned Mrs. Anna, "has even Peter been arrested now?"