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Hohenwittlingen

Prison for Baptists from 1560 to 1617

"The troubled times of Martin Luther not only gave Württemberg a single new faith, but a long-lasting dispute over the correct interpretation of the new testament to the two remaining sacraments of the Lord's Supper and Baptism.

The exhebition

The exhebition in the citymuseum "Klostermühle" Bad Urach in 1995

This Webpage

... is used to provide information on a plaque that was unveiled on September 9, 2001 as part of an ecumenical service on Hohenwittlingen. The initiator of an exhibition in the Urach Museum in 1995, Dr. Dr. Bütterlin from Münsingen, kindly provided us with the panels of the exhibition, so that all the panels and texts of the exhibition can also be seen here.

Baptists, Anabaptists, Mennonites, Amish, Hutterers

– they believed firmly in the Gospel and were persecuted for it by the official churches of other denominations. The fates of many martyrs are recorded among them in the Martyr's Mirror, which was first printed in Dortrecht in Holland in 1659.
Also at Hohenwittlingen Castle near Bad Urach on the edge of the Swabian Alb, many men from Württemberg Baptist communities were imprisoned from 1560 to 1617, among them the church leaders Paul Glock and Mathias Binder.

In 1995, an exhibition of photos of historical documents by the historian Dr. Rudolf Bütterlin, a historian from the region, was shown at the Stadtmuseum of Bad Urach.
On 9 September 2001, a plaque was unveiled on Hohenwittlingen as part of a special service.
Now in 2020, the website hohenwittlingen.de is finally going online. Dr. Bütterlin made the archives of the exhibition available for this purpose, which now can be viewed here again for the first time since the exhibition in 1995.

Already in 2013 a group of Hutterers visited the memorial plaque on the Hohenwittlingen, thanks to the Southwest Press for the newspaper article (Link) to it.

When the website brings visitors from near and far to the Hohenwittlingen or the information home on the screen, this cloud of witnesses comes back into view after Heb. 12:1. The remembrance of their steadfastness in faith and the suffering of Paul Glock, Mathias Binder and many of their fellow brothers and sisters should strengthen us in our faith and invite us to follow Jesus.

This website is also a thank you to the Dennis and Mary Weaver family in Fredericksburg, Ohio, an Amish family that I was able to visit for a week at the end of August 1982. During a service in their barn that lasted three hours and included three sermons, I read in the hymnbook for the first time about Michael Sattlers and his wife's testimony which ended in Rottenburg am Neckar. This was the beginning of the journey of  the Baptists also to our region.

Reutlingen, May 2020 Hansjörg Schrade
with many thanks for the translation to Greg Long, native from Pennsylvania, living near the Hohenwittlingen.

PS: We are happy to help visitors from afar with the planning of their tour on the Hohenwittlingen,  and we are looking forward to further contact with them.

Where

Hohenwittlingen castle ruins

Opened: AD 1000
Height: 677 m above sea level

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