John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 419

The Kraichgau region, which I was writing about recently, was, besides being the home of many people in the Second Germanna Colony, also the immediate past home of the early Mennonites, as represented by Hans Herr and the party which came with him; however, most Mennonites do not think of the Kraichgau as their home in Europe.  Typically, they are more apt to respond that they came from Switzerland, which was the origin of Anabaptist thought in the years just immediately following Martin Luther's break with the Catholic Church.

As the Reformation was getting underway, religious thinkers in Switzerland felt that the reforms of Luther did not go far enough.  Their line of thought turned into the Reformed Church.  Still other people in Switzerland felt that the "Reformers" were incomplete and they wished to emphasize three points.

1. They believed that an individual should join the church as an adult when he or she could understand the significance of the action.
   
2. Hence, they did not believe in infant baptism.
   
3. They also believed in the separation of the church and the state and they were pacifists.

These people became known as the Anabaptists, or the rebaptizers.  Applied first as a mark of derision, the Anabaptists proudly accepted the designation.

Their beliefs about the separation of the church and the state and pacifism perhaps grew more strongly with the passage of time as the result of the treatment the Anabaptisms received at the joint hands of the Reformed Church and the cantons of Switzerland.  By then the Reformed Church was the state church of the cantons.  The Reformed Church clergy felt that the absence of infant baptism was denying many the right of entry to heaven.  The state felt that the lack of infant baptism was denying citizenship and the right of the state to conscript future soldiers.  In their combined view, baptism of infants not only was the passport to heaven but it was the entry into citizenship of the cantons.

The first reaction of the combined forces of the church and the state was to kill anyone who professed Anabaptist thought.  Many martyrs were created, but each one seemed to be the inspiration to lead others to Anabaptist principles.  This persecution went on for more than two centuries and it is possible to state that there would never have been any Germanna Colonies in Virginia had it not been for this persecution.  In later periods one of the favored ways of persecuting the Anabaptists was to expel them from Switzerland.

In 1709, Christoph von Graffenried had a contract with the city fathers of Bern to take a group of Anabaptists to some place outside Switzerland.  In his search, he found that Francis Michel had been exploring in the New World with a view also toward colonization.  In addition, Michel also thought he had found silver which intrigued Graffenried.  This led to the recruitment of a group of miners from the Siegen area which became, eventually, the First Germanna Colony.

Returning to the Anabaptists, after the Thirty Years' War ended in 1648, there were many opportunities in southwest Germany for resettlement.  Many Anabaptists moved there at this time, some by compulsion and some by choice.  Though life was a bit freer for them there than it had been in Switzerland, there were restrictions such as limitations on the size of the groups that could meet, special taxes, no land ownership, and service in the armies.

From this situation, the Anabaptists were the very first to respond to William Penn's offer of cheap land and the free exercise of religion.  The first group of Anabaptists founded Germantown, just outside Philadelphia, in the 1680's.  These people were augmented by many more but they were all of an urban, not a rural orientation.  The Herr party in 1709/10, who were farmers, were the first Anabaptists to seek large quantities of land.  As a consequence they settled on the frontier amongst the Indians where they procured hundreds of acres for each member.  Within a short period of time they were recruiting other immigrants from among their friends and relatives in Germany.

The Anabaptists believed in "plain living."  They grew into two main bodies, the Mennonites and the Amish, and there is a tremendous range of practice within these groups.  The Amish are the most visible because their life style seems so foreign to us; however, you might remember that these people were among the first, if not the first, to espouse adult baptism and the separation of the church and state.  These are widely accepted principles today.  The principle of pacifism has not been widely adopted but it is certainly better appreciated than it was a few centuries ago.  So, these people, who might seem backward and out of the modern world, have actually been leaders in religious thought.

The note has been longer for two reasons.  First, I will be a tour leader at the Hans Herr House tomorrow.  Second, once I started on the basic story, I thought I should bring it to some sort of conclusion.

If any of you would like to be a tour guide at the Hans Herr House, you need not be an Anabaptist.  Many of us who volunteer there are not Anabaptists.  We find the story interesting and we appreciate the contributions that have been made.  We volunteer to tell others about it.  The story is interesting enough that we have many visitors from Germany who come to see how Germans lived in the New World.