Historic Anabaptist Places (Pictures itt)

[Swiss Bro]

Then we should be able to figure something out quite easily. Just let me know when you will be in Zurich and we'll take it from there. I suggest we take further correspondence to private message.

[appleman2006]

Then we should be able to figure something out quite easily. Just let me know when you will be in Zurich and we'll take it from there. I suggest we take further correspondence to private message.

Does not sound like it will be anytime soon.

[Swiss Bro]

Will you post the pictures of the castle? I doubt I'll ever get to one, but I think it would be so interesting to visit one, or more!

I actually have posted a picture of it but maybe you can't see it, it's a panorama shot? Anyway, I'll post some more since you asked.

Disclaimer: This post has absolutely nothing to do with Anabaptist places so if you came for those, please stop reading/looking now. I will post new Anabaptist places in due course.

Ok so the Hallwyl castle is not extremely big or fancy but what makes it really special is that it is a water castle. That's quite rare in Switzerland. What's even cooler is that it is a double water castle actually. You can see it on the pictures below:

On this picture you have the main (and only) entrance on the right hand side, a stone bridge. On the left, what seems to be a few ecclectic buildings, the ones in front grey stones, the ones in the back white:



But actually, the grey stone castle is separated from the white castle by another bridge, one that can be pulled up:



And from the other side:



So it's actually two separate "islands", and even if the first one was taken, once the bridge was pulled up there was no way you would get into the white castle.

Now as we are off topic anyway I'll jump on the occasion to show you my top 3 castles I've visited so far:

No 3: Glengorm Castle on the Isle of Mull, Scotland:



This is now run as a bed and breakfast and I spent a few days there last year. Needless to say it was fantastic. Yes, that's the sea right behind it:



No 2: Kisimul Castle, Isle of Barra, Scotland:



This is the seat of Clan MacNeil. However, in 2001 the castle was leased by the chief of Clan MacNeil to Historic Scotland for 1000 years for the annual sum of £1 and a bottle of whisky. Anyway, this is a true sea castle and can only be approached by boat. It looks best from Heaval, the island hill, with views over the Bishop Isles. One of my favorites views in the world.



No 1: No contest, the most spectacular castle of them all is Neuschwanstein in Germany:



Built by the excentric (to say the least) King of Bavaria, Ludwig II, it is not even a real medieval castle but was built from scratch in the second half of the 19 century. It's only half finished on the inside because the King was declared mad during the construction time, amongst others because of the exorbitant sums he splashed out for constructing castles. The King subsequntely drowned himself but Neuschwanstein is now the most visited castle in Germany and generating decent revenues to the Free State of Bavaria. It wasn't such a mad idea after all...



Anyway that was it, my next post will be Anabaptist places only, promised.

[Somebody]

Thank you! Thank you!

I really wonder what it would have been like to actually live in a castle??

[ohio jones]

Disclaimer: This post has absolutely nothing to do with Anabaptist places so if you came for those, please stop reading/looking now. I will post new Anabaptist places in due course.

You are probably right about the two castles in Scotland, but let's see what I can do with Neuschwanstein.

In 1545 the city of Augsburg was facing a shortage of lumber and firewood. The surrounding forests had been depleted. City engineer and Anabaptist theologian Pilgram Marpeck arranged to lease timber land owned by a convent in Füssen, the town that's now the gateway to Ludwig's south Bavarian castles. The convent's tower is visible at the end of the street.



Looking west from Neuschwanstein: Hohenschwangau, Ludwig's boyhood home, is perched in the center between the lakes, and Füssen is on the far right just beyond the first ridge.



Walking from Neuschwanstein to Füssen past the smaller lake (Schwansee) and across the hill, I found that wood is still being cut in that area, though on a smaller scale.



Marpeck's plan was to float the logs down the Lech river to Augsburg. Here's the river at Füssen, looking upstream toward the Austrian border less than a mile away.



They would then dam the river at Augsburg, 100 km downstream and 1000 feet lower in elevation, to catch the logs. His advisors said it would not work. They were right. After the third successively stronger dam broke (some of the logs continued downstream as far as Linz, Austria, 350 km away!), they gave up and found other methods of transporting the wood.

[Swiss Bro]

Now that was quite a stretch Ohio Jones Back to some legit Anabaptist places...

Yesterday, we decided to walk the Täuferweg in Merishausen. This is one of a handful of so-called Anabaptist trails in Switzerland (I have covered a few others in this thread) but what's special to this one is that the first stretch of the trail is actually called Täuferweg (Anabaptist Street) as a real street name. So there are actually people living on Anabaptist Street. How cool is that Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the street sign so you just have to believe me (or you could google it).

Anyway, we parked our car in front of the village church and walked the Täuferweg which becomes a gravel path after the last houses and it leads you into an idyllic and quiet valley surrounded by rolling wooded hills. After 20 minutes or so you reach the site of the Anabaptist well. It comes with a basin in a stream, also fed by a fountain spring. It is thought that Anabaptists held secret baptisms in this basin.

As we are experiencing a severe drought in Switzerland, there was not enough water to perform any baptisms for the time being... apart from that, the setting is rather idyllic.

The baptismal pool:



The spring:



Inside the dry riverbed:



Spring to the left, basin to the right:



From the Anabaptist well, there is one long but relatively easy climb of approx. 300 meters of altitude up to the Randen, the highest hill of the Canton of Schaffhausen. It's all in the forest so quite agreeable even on a sunny day. It's a good thing too that the trail is signposted (the white markers on the picture below) as otherwise it would be easy to get lost. We actually met two elderly ladies who were lost and had been walking in circles for about an hour. Luckily, I was able to show them the direction to the car park...



Only when you come out on the top of the hill, you find yourselves on a nice open meadow where you can rest and admire the beautiful nature.



On a nice day like this it is easy to forget that the Swiss brethren had to hide in these forests from persecution, living in primitive huts and always on the run. In order to keep this memory alive, a memorial stone was installed on the meadow in 2004, the Anabapist stone. It looks a bit like a medieval tombstone but its actually a work by a local artist.





There would have been two more stages to the Anabaptist trail: The hiding huts in the forest (I think there is a replica hut) and, back down on the other side of the hill, Schleitheim, where they have a copy of the Schleitheim confession in a museum. However, the museum is closed due to the Coronavirus and we were running late already so we decided to skip the huts and head back down to Merishausen the same way we had come up. We'll come back once the museum is again open and will tackle the huts from the Schleitheim side.

It's easy to imagine a bunch of brethren gathering on these forest meadows, worshipping and maybe also discussing the items to set out in the Schleitheim confession of faith...



It was a nice day out with quite a bit of walking. We made about 16 kilometers (10 miles) and it took us 2 hours to get to the stone and 2 hours back. But it was well worth the effort as we were rewarded by a peaceful atmosphere (except for a myriad of mountainbikers swooshing by on a regular basis), a good mix of natural beauty and interesting historical sites.

For those interested, more detail on the trail is to be found here complete with maps and everything:

https://www.natourpark.ch/tour/taeuferweg/

[RZehr]

Beautiful pictures. Interesting to see. Scary times and probably wouldn't be real good memories for them though, I suppose.

[Judas Maccabeus]

I will take another go at this. We are headed to eastern Europe, to Slovakia, to the visit the town of Veľké Leváre. Here is a former Hutterite settlement, between Vienna and Bratislava. It was founded by the Hutterites in about 1622. They enjoyed freedom here for a time.

Some of the communal housing. Likely for brothers.



Some more of the housing, converted into private homes:



Maria Teresa soon gained control over this area, and gave the ultimatum-convert to Catholicism, move or die. Most left, moving further eastward. This community accepted Catholicism, with the condition that they would be able to retain their communal lifestyle. The now catholic church is the site of what some Hutterites refer to as the "Great Apostatesy." The community remained intact until the middle of the last century. Here is the church.



Here is the reason for the location, falling water:



Here is a marker:

[ohio jones]

About 15 miles west of there, on the Austrian side of the border, is an open-air museum that looks interesting, Museumsdorf Niedersulz. One of the houses relocated to the site has an exhibit about the Hutterites. It's on my list for the next time I'm in the region, and I might have to add Veľké Leváre as well.

[Judas Maccabeus]

About 15 miles west of there, on the Austrian side of the border, is an open-air museum that looks interesting, Museumsdorf Niedersulz. One of the houses relocated to the site has an exhibit about the Hutterites. It's on my list for the next time I'm in the region, and I might have to add Veľké Leváre as well.

Unless you rent a car, which I will not do, the trains/bus there is a real treat. Slovakian branchline service takes me back some 40 years. Then there is the "buffet," my wife needed a bathroom, and the train station did not have one. I tired german, no go. Wife tried french, she was told the WC was in the "buffet." Think of your worse dive bar, with a gal behind a bank style window, pouring shots to the customers through the hole, for half a euro a shot, a fennel type potion. Wood fire heat only. This time my german worked. WC was clean. I tried to buy a coke, nope, only one item on offer.....shots of fennel liquor.

Wife still willing to travel.

J.M.