Braun, Burkhard (d. 1567)
Burkhard Braun (Bämerle, Bärml), 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.
He joined the Philippites, and by 1542 had joined the Hutterites. According to Hutterite accounts he was imprisoned and tortured in 1557 and died in 1567 after becoming a Hutterite Servant of the Word.
Bibliography
Beck, Josef. Die Geschichts-Bücher der Wiedertäufer in Oesterreich-Ungarn. Vienna, 1883; reprinted Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1967.
Hege, Christian and Christian Neff. Mennonitisches Lexikon, 4 vols. Frankfurt & Weierhof: Hege; Karlsruhe; Schneider, 1913-1967: I, 256.
Nicoladoni, Alexander. Johannes Bünderlin von Linz und die oberösterreichischen Täufergemeinden in den Jahren 1525-1531. Berlin: Gaertner, 1893.
Packull, Werner O. Hutterite Beginnings : Communitarian Experiments During the Reformation. Baltimore, Md. : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995: 285, 288, 397-398 (n. 31).
Roth, Friedrich. Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereins für Schwaben und Neuburg 27-28 (1900, 1901).
| Author(s) | Christian Hege |
|---|---|
| Samuel J. Steiner | |
| Date Published | 2009 |
Cite This Article
MLA style
Hege, Christian and Samuel J. Steiner. "Braun, Burkhard (d. 1567)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 2009. Web. 16 Apr 2024. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Braun,_Burkhard_(d._1567)&oldid=165603.
APA style
Hege, Christian and Samuel J. Steiner. (2009). Braun, Burkhard (d. 1567). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 16 April 2024, from https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Braun,_Burkhard_(d._1567)&oldid=165603.
Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, p. 407. All rights reserved.
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