Durs Aebi and Margret Steiner from Sumiswald
The later Anabaptist teacher Durs Aebi was born around 1610, and from the 1640s he lived in the hamlet of Ober-Kneubühl near Sumiswald. It is not known why and how he and his family became Anabaptists. From 1670, he and his wife Margret Steiner from Oberdiessbach were imprisoned several times at Trachselwald Castle and in Bern for being "obstinate". For a while they and some of their children live in Kraichgau near Heidelberg. However, war hardship and hunger, but also care and love for their co-religionists in Bern drove them back again and again to their old home. Repeated prison sentences and renewed expulsions are the result. The Aebis' extensive property was confiscated and used by Sumiswald for its own purposes, such as the construction of two school buildings. After 1684 the traces of the couple disappear. Even though they were persecuted and expelled throughout their lives, they had a large number of descendants in the Kraichgau, in the Palatinate and especially in North America.
The Anabaptist couple Durs Aebi (ca. 1611 – ca. 1685) and Margret Steiner of Oberkneubühl near Sumiswald
"Anabaptists were never welcome in Bern. But there were times when - especially as a woman - you could remain reasonably unmolested as long as you kept quiet and discreet. And often there were relatives and neighbors who covered for you if the priest in the village or the bailiff at the castle became suspicious."
Title page of the Täufergut urbar of the municipality of Sumiswald.
«For me, too, as a man, things went well for a long time. Because when I was arrested for the first time in 1670 because of my Anabaptist convictions and imprisoned here in Trachselwald Castle, I was no longer the youngest at the age of 60. Over the years I was given more and more tasks in our Anabaptist community. At that time, many people in the Bern region longed for a better life, for more freedom and justice, for a dismantling of grievances in politics, society and the church. More and more sought and found answers to their questions in Anabaptist circles and joined our churches. Astonishing, actually! For especially since the Peasants' War of 1653, the persecution of our parishioners increased greatly. Nowhere was safe, anyone and everyone could be affected. This plunged many of us into hardship and misery. More and more I was consulted for difficult decisions, more and more despairing people I had to comfort, more and more sought pastoral counsel and biblical guidance from me. No wonder that the authorities became aware of me as an Anabaptist teacher.»
«For a long time, they had been looking for me and my wife Margret Steiner from Oberdiessbach. Again and again we escaped the persecutors, often only at the very last moment. However, we were powerless against the extensive and systematic raids of the Anabaptist man-hunters paid by Bern in the summer of 1670.» [1]
Little is known about Durs Aebi's first decades of life. He was born around 1611, perhaps in Rüegsau or Affoltern. Whether and to what extent he was related to the Anabaptist Aebi from Heimiswil in the parish of Oberburg, known since the 1630s at the latest, is not known.[2] In 1643 Durs Aebi was still accepted as a reformed churchman in Sumiswald, at this time he must have already lived with his family on Ober-Kneubühl.[3] Unfortunately, we do not know when and why he and several family members subsequently became Anabaptist.
"My husband's first stay in the cold, damp dungeon at Trachselwald Castle lasted only a few weeks. Then the bailiff had him transferred to Bern, where he was henceforth locked up in the orphanage. At the same time, our son Andres was also transported to Bern: In the meantime it had been discovered that he and his wife were also Anabaptists. And very quickly, by the way, the authorities had also determined that my husband and I were by no means poor and that there was "something to get" from us. Our home on Ober-Kneubühl alone was valued at 3680 pounds and together with our other property our assets were estimated at 5000 pounds.» [4]
Since Durs Aebi did not want to recant, he was expelled at the beginning of November 1670 as a "stiff-necked" man. His wanted poster was sent to all Bernese offices to make sure that he could not find shelter elsewhere and propagate his Anabaptist convictions. And indeed, Aebi was picked up again as early as the end of July 1671. He escaped the galley punishment only because of his age.[5] This time he was imprisoned in the Tittlinger Tower in Bern.[6] In the course of the winter, however, he seems to have managed to escape, because in February 1672 he is one of the co-signers of a letter of thanks and supplication written by Anabaptist refugees from the Palatinate and Kraichgau to the Dutch Mennonites. In it they report an ultimatum from the Bernese government that all Anabaptists must leave the country within two weeks - under penalty of imprisonment, confiscation of goods and forcible deportation. Durs Aebi with his wife and four married children had apparently joined the refugee train and found a provisional place to stay in Ehrstätt near Heidelberg.[7]
However, the Aebi parents had probably fled the Kraichgau region during the course of the Dutch-French War (1672-1678), which spread fear and terror there and once again completely devastated large areas of the country. Promptly, the two were picked up again in Bernbiet, imprisoned in Trachselwald Castle and probably brought to Bern in the winter of 1678/79. Again, Aebi refused to renounce his Anabaptist faith. Only because of his old age he was not subsequently flogged, but merely expelled from the country with a severe warning.[8] But already in January 1680 Durs Aebi and Margret Steiner were picked up again. "The bailiff recorded their statements and asked Bern for instructions on what to do with the two of them. After a flogging with rods and a small allowance granted from their own confiscated property, the two were deported again in April 1680.[9] But that was far from the end of the never-ending story. Was it irresponsible stubbornness, sheer desperation and hopelessness, or was it love for their own relatives or the call of Anabaptist congregations for their pastor that persuaded Durs Aebi and Margret Steiner to return to the Bern region again and again? The fact is that the Aebis were apparently popular far and wide and frequented "many households".[10] It is also a fact that the well-known cycle of capture - imprisonment - expulsion - deportation was repeated in the autumn of 1680, in the summer of 1681, in the autumn of 1681 and in the autumn of 1682.[11] Again and again there seem to have been sympathizers who took pity on the elderly couple and gave them shelter. Hans Reichard from the hamlet of Heiligenland on the Lueg, for example, was severely punished for this in the spring of 1683.[12]
Now the patience of the Bernese authorities was definitely at an end. Durs Aebi was sentenced to life imprisonment in the orphanage in Bern. The costs were to be covered from his confiscated "Täufergut" (Anabaptist property), which lay behind the municipality of Sumiswald. However, the news that the Emmental community had already built two schoolhouses from the confiscation funds, contrary to the rules, and that there was therefore hardly any money left, caused a disagreement between Bern and Sumiswald. Due to its zeal in the fight against Anabaptism, however, Bern refrained from a reprimand and further penalties for the village. And when Durs Aebi's son Andres from Kraichgau asks in May 1683 on behalf of his seven children for the return of their share of his father's confiscated estate, this is refused to him - much to his credit "for different enough considerations".[13] In the course of the 18th century, only 500 lb of the original 5000 lb of confiscated property of the Aebis remained in the Anabaptist estate of the municipality of Sumiswald …[14]
The last note on Durs Aebi in Bernese records is an entry in the council manual of May 26, 1684, according to which, among others, the "aged and lame Aebi from Emmental" had escaped from the orphanage. Once again the order went out to the Grossweibel to investigate how this could have happened and who was the one who helped the Anabaptists to escape.[15]
About the descendants of Aebi we know that some of them settled permanently in the Kraichgau and in the Palatinate. Others belonged to the emigrant groups that set out for North America via Mannheim and Rotterdam, especially since 1717, built up a new existence in Pennsylvania and from there spread further with numerous descendants.[16]
[1] StABE, A II 473, 549; A II 474, 1; B III 194a.
[2] Vgl. dazu etwa StABE, KB Oberburg 2, 275.
[3] GA Sumiswald Rechenbuch I.
[4] StABE, A I 487,562f.; A II 474, 47; B VII 2059, 37ff.
[5] Hans Burkhalter 28, Peter Brand 46, Niklaus Baltzli 30, Ueli Zaugg 30. Hans Lörtscher (Lötscher), Melchior Lörtscher (Lötscher), Hans Wenger (hat 9K), Peter Herdeicher (1K), Jörg Friedrich (3K), Michael Sterchi (3K).
[6] StABE, A II 475, 358; B VII 54, 93f
[7] SAA 565 A, 1196 und 1199, ferner 1411.
[8] StABE, A II 498, 104.125; B VIII 2059.
[9] StABE, A II 499, 243f.277.
[10] StABE, B III 121, 129ff.
[11] StABE, A II 499, 243f; A II 502, 139; A II 503, 332f.394f.405f.; A II 504, 21.36f.60.109.292.311; A II 505, 70f.75.96.
[12] StABE, A II 509, 343.411f.
[13] StABE, A II 509, 522f.550f.; A II 510, 650; A II 511, 246.
[14] Gemeindearchiv Sumiswald, Rechenbuch V.
[15] StABE, A II 511, 408f.
[16] Vgl. dazu Newman, George Frederick, The Aebi-Eby families of Switzerland, Germany and North America, 1550-1850 , Huntingdon Valley, PA : NMN Enterprises, 2003.