Burkhard Braun, an evangelist, one of the first preachers of the South German Anabaptists at the beginning of the Reformation. He was born in Ofen, was a goldbeater by vocation, and is known in the court records mostly as Burkhard von Ofen. Only a few facts have been handed down about his work. We hear of him first soon after the Martyrs' Synod, which met in Augsburg, 20 August 1527. He apparently joined the Anabaptists at that time; in the following month he was arrested at Augsburg because he had been baptized, and on 1 October 1527 was expelled from the city with his wife and children as a nonresident. He became a zealous worker in the vicinity of Augsburg as elder of the church; in Göggingen he baptized both Margarethe Anwald and Bernhard Zirgkendorfer, who were therefore executed with Eitelhans Langenmantel 11 May 1528, at Weissenhorn. At Christmas 1527 he conducted a meeting in the big house near Wellenburg. Then he went to Passau, where he also preached and baptized in January 1528 and ordained the schoolmaster of Burghausen, Wolfgang Welser, as elder; this was related by the captured members of the congregation at Passau. Later he went to Moravia and joined the congregation in Austerlitz. When this congregation divided in 1530 he sided with Georg Zaunring and Wilhelm Reublin. When this group went to Auspitz he was given charge of the care and comfort of the sick and the children who were left behind and could not follow until homes were prepared for them in Austerlitz. In the same year he was banned because he criticized the church, but, as the chronicle states, the authorities could produce no evidence. Nothing is known of his later life.

Bibliography

Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Scottdale, Pennsylvania, and Waterloo, Ontario, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, p. 407. All rights reserved. For information on ordering the encyclopedia visit the Herald Press website.

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