Canada Slim and the Last Battle

Eskisehir, Switzerland, Sunday 19 September 2021

As the dates below will show, this blog (The Chronicles of Canada Slim) (one of two) has suffered from neglect.

I offer only one explanation:

I have been….distracted.

The purpose of The Chronicles of Canada Slim is to capture in writing my adventures prior to the calendar year.

Generally, the Chronicles tells the tales of travels in Alsace, Italy, Lanzarote, London, Porto, Serbia and Switzerland.

But much has been happening since the finale of my Zwingli Way Walk (recorded here): an accident which broke both my arms, work commitments, a visit to Canada, the Corona virus, and the decision to work here in Turkey.

Please see Canada Slim and…..

• the City of Spirits (3 January 2016)
• the Push for Reformation (5 January 2016)
• the Genius of Glarus (14 August 2016)
• the Road to Reformation (12 November 2017)
• the Wild Child of Toggenburg (20 November 2017)
• the Thundering Hollows (27 November 2017)
• the Basel Butterfly Effect (3 December 2017)
• the Vienna Waltz (9 December 2017)
• the Battle for Switzerland’s Soul (18 December 2017)
• the Last Walk of Robert Walser (25 December 2017)
• the Monks of the Dark Forest (8 January 2018)
• the Privileged Place (26 January 2018)
• the Lakeside Pilgrimage (24 April 2018)
• the Battlefield Brotherhood (8 July 2018)
• the Family of Mann (12 August 2018)
• the Anachronic Man (8 October 2018)
• the Chocolate Factory of Unhappiness (30 January 2019)
• the Third Man (26 June 2019)
• the Humanitarian Adventure (10 December 2019)
• the Succulent Collection (14 November 2020)
• the Zürich Zealots (19 November 2020)

I have tried to contribute regularly to my other blog Building Everest, which tries to relate events of this calendar year along with ongoing accounts of Swiss Miss‘s world wanderings and recollections of my 2020 travels in Canada just prior to Covid-19’s impact being felt globally.

As well, other writing projects have also suffered, but as long as I breathe I will still believe that these too will eventually be accomplished.

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Thursday 3 December 2020

All things end.

One day these fingers will stop typing and my mind will go silent.

One day one breath will be my last.

Death is the one commonality we all share, regardless of whether pauper or prince, peasant or president, saint or sinner.

And it is accepting this inevitability that all of us must come to grips with, in our own way, in our own time.

Save for the suicidal or the sick, few of us wake up in the morning and think to ourselves:

Perhaps today is a good day to die.

Perhaps an exception to this rule of the suicidal or the painfully sick are the lives of those in risky professions, such as health care, the police force, the military.

As death is part of, and the end of, life, the question we all ask and the answer we all fear is what, if anything, follows death.

The afterlife (also referred to as life after death or the world to come) is an existence in which the essential part of an individual’s identity or their stream of consciousness continues to live after the death of their physical body.

According to various ideas about the afterlife, the essential aspect of the individual that lives on after death may be some partial element, or the entire soul or spirit, of an individual, which carries with it and may confer personal identity or, on the contrary nirvana.

Belief in an afterlife is in contrast to the belief in oblivion after death.

In some views, this continued existence takes place in a spiritual realm, and in other popular views, the individual may be reborn into this world and begin the life cycle over again, likely with no memory of what they have done in the past. In this latter view, such rebirths and deaths may take place over and over again continuously until the individual gains entry to a spiritual realm or otherworld.

Major views on the afterlife derive from religion, esotericism and metaphysics.

Some belief systems, such as those in the Abrahamic tradition, hold that the dead go to a specific plane of existence after death, as determined by God, or other divine judgment, based on their actions or beliefs during life.

In contrast, in systems of reincarnation, such as those in the Indian religions, the nature of the continued existence is determined directly by the actions of the individual in the ended life.

The Abrahamic religions, also collectively referred to as the world of Abrahamism, are a group of religions that claim descent from the worship of the God of Abraham, an ancient Semitic religion of the Bronze Age Israelites and the Ishmaelites, the direct predecessor of various ancient Israelite sects, including the remaining two extant Israelite religions of Judaism and Samaritanism, with all other Abrahamic religions descending from Judaism.

The Abrahamic religions are monotheistic, with the term deriving from the patriarch Abraham (a major figure described in the Torah, Tanakh, Bible, and Qu’ran, variously recognized by Jews, Samaritans, Christians, Muslims, and others).

The three major Abrahamic religions trace their origins to the first two sons of Abraham: for Jews and Christians it is his second son Isaac, and for Muslims his elder son Ishmael.

Abrahamic religions spread globally through Christianity being adopted by the Roman Empire in the 4th century and Islam by the Umayyad Empire from the 7th century.

Today the Abrahamic religions are one of the major divisions in comparative religion (along with Indian, Iranian and East Asian religions).

The major Abrahamic religions in chronological order of founding are Judaism (the source of the other two religions) in the 6th century BCE, Christianity in the 1st century CE, and Islam in the 7th century CE.

Christianity, Islam and Judaism are the Abrahamic religions with the greatest numbers of adherents.

Christians are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

The words Christ and Christian derive from the Koine Greek title Christós (Χριστός), a translation of the Biblical Hebrew term mashiach (מָשִׁיחַ) (usually rendered as messiah in English).

While there are diverse interpretations of Christianity which sometimes conflict, they are united in believing that Jesus has a unique significance.

The term “Christian” used as an adjective is descriptive of anything associated with Christianity or Christian churches, or in a proverbial sense “all that is noble, and good, and Christlike.”

It does not have a meaning of ‘of Christ’ or ‘related or pertaining to Christ‘.

According to a 2011 Pew Research Center survey, there were 2.2 billion Christians around the world in 2010, up from about 600 million in 1910.

Today, about 37% of all Christians live in the Americas, about 26% live in Europe, 24% live in sub-Saharan Africa, about 13% live in Asia and the Pacific, and 1% live in the Middle East and North Africa.

Christians make up the majority of the population in 158 countries and territories.

280 million Christians live as a minority.

About half of all Christians worldwide are Catholic, while more than a third are Protestant (37%).

Orthodox communions comprise 12% of the world’s Christians. 

Other Christian groups make up the remainder.

By 2050, the Christian population is expected to exceed 3 billion. 

According to a 2012 Pew Research Center survey, Christianity will remain the world’s largest religion in 2050, if current trends continue.

Christians are the one of the most persecuted religious groups in the world, especially in the Middle East, North Africa, East Asia, and South Asia.

Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

It is the world’s largest religion, with about 2.4 billion followers.

Its adherents, known as Christians, make up a majority of the population in 157 countries and territories, and believe that Jesus is the Christ, whose coming as the Messiah was prophesied in the Hebrew Bible, called the Old Testament in Christianity, and chronicled in the New Testament.

Christianity remains culturally diverse in its Western and Eastern branches, as well as in its doctrines concerning justification and the nature of salvation, ecclesiology, ordination and Christology.

The creeds of various Christian denominations generally hold in common Jesus as the Son of God who ministered, suffered and died on a cross, but rose from the dead for the salvation of mankind, referred to as the Gospel, meaning the “good news“.

Describing Jesus’ life and teachings are the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, with the Old Testament as the Gospel‘s respected background.

Christianity began as a Judaic sect in the 1st century in the Roman province of Judea.

Jesus’ apostles and their followers spread around the Levant, Europe, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Transcaucasia, Egypt and Ethiopia, despite initial persecution.

It soon attracted Gentile (non-Jewish) God-fearers, which led to a departure from Jewish customs, and, after the Fall of Jerusalem (70 CE), which ended the Temple-based Judaism, Christianity slowly separated from Judaism.

Emperor Constantine the Great (272 – 337) decriminalized Christianity in the Roman Empire by the Edict of Milan (313), later convening the Council of Nicaea (325) where early Christianity was consolidated into what would become the state church of the Roman Empire (380).

The early history of Christianity’s united church before major schisms is sometimes referred to as the “Great Church” (though divergent sects existed at the same time, including Gnostics and Jewish Christians).

The Church of the East split after the Council of Ephesus (431) and Oriental Orthodoxy split after the Council of Chalcedon (451) over differences in Christology, while the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church separated in the East-West Schism (1054), especially over the authority of the Bishop of Rome. 

Protestantism split in numerous denominations from the Catholic Church in the Reformation era (16th century) over theological and ecclesiological disputes, most predominantly on the issue of justification and the primacy of the Bishop of Rome.

Christianity played a prominent role in the development of Western civilization, particularly in Europe from late antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Following the Age of Discovery (15th – 17th century), Christianity was spread into the Americas, Oceania, sub-Saharan Africa, and the rest of the world via missionary work.

The four largest branches of Christianity are the Catholic Church (1.3 billion / 50.1%), Protestantism (920 million / 36.7%), the Eastern Orthodox Church (230 million), and the Oriental Orthodox churches (62 million) (Orthodox churches combined at 11.9%), though thousands of smaller church communities exist despite efforts toward unity (ecumenism).

Despite a decline in adherence in the West, Christianity remains the dominant religion in the region, with about 70% of the population identifying as Christian. 

Christianity is growing in Africa and Asia, the world’s most populous continents.

Protestantism is a form of Christianity that originated with the 16th-century Reformation, a movement against what its followers perceived to be errors in the Catholic Church.

Protestants originating in the Reformation reject the Roman Catholic doctrine of papal supremacy, but disagree among themselves regarding the number of sacraments, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and matters of ecclesiastical polity and apostolic succession.

They emphasize:

• the priesthood of all believers 
• justification by faith (sola fide) rather than by good works
• the teaching that salvation comes by divine grace or “unmerited favour” only, not as something merited (sola gratia)
• affirm the Bible as being the sole highest authority (sola scriptura / “scripture alone“) or primary authority (prima scriptura / “scripture first“) for Christian doctrine, rather than being on parity with sacred tradition.

The five solae of Lutheran and Reformed Christianity summarize basic theological differences in opposition to the Catholic Church.

Protestantism began in Germany in 1517, when Martin Luther published his Ninety-five Theses as a reaction against abuses in the sale of indulgences by the Catholic Church, which purported to offer the remission of the temporal punishment of sins to their purchasers.

The term, however, derives from the letter of protestation from German Lutheran princes in March 1529 against an edict of the Diet of Speyer condemning the teachings of Martin Luther as heretical.

Although there were earlier breaks and attempts to reform the Catholic Church — notably by Peter Waldo, John Wycliffe and Jan Hus — only Luther succeeded in sparking a wider, lasting and modern movement.

In the 16th century, Lutheranism spread from Germany into Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Estonia and Iceland.

Calvinist churches spread in Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Scotland, Switzerland and France by Protestant Reformers, such as John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli and John Knox.

The political separation of the Church of England from the Pope under King Henry VIII began Anglicanism, bringing England and Wales into this broad Reformation movement.

Today, Protestantism constitutes the second-largest form of Christianity (after Catholicism), with a total of 800 million to 1 billion adherents worldwide or about 37% of all Christians. 

Protestants have developed their own culture, with major contributions in education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy and the arts and many other fields.

Protestantism is diverse, being more divided theologically and ecclesiastically than the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church or Oriental Orthodoxy.

Without structural unity or central human authority, Protestants developed the concept of an invisible church, in contrast to the Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East, which all understand themselves as the one and only original church — the “one true church” — founded by Jesus Christ.

Some denominations do have a worldwide scope and distribution of membership, while others are confined to a single country.

A majority of Protestants are members of a handful of Protestant denominational families: 

• Adventists
• Anabaptists
• Anglicans / Episcopalians 
• Baptists  
• Calvinist / Reformed
• Lutherans
• Methodists
• Pentecostals  

Charismatic, Evangelical, Independent and other churches are on the rise and constitute a significant part of Protestantism.

As regular followers of my blogs know, I have, for quite some time, been writing about my following in the footsteps of Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli.

By “following in the footsteps” I do not refer to following the example of Zwingli’s life as a model for my own.

But rather I mean that I have been tracing on foot the life path of Zwingli by walking from his place of birth in Wildhaus in the Toggenburg region to his final resting place in Kappel am Albis – a five-hour / 19 km walk south of Uetliberg overlooking Zürich.

Huldrych Zwingli or Ulrich Zwingli (1484 – 1531) was a leader of the Reformation in Switzerland, born during a time of emerging Swiss patriotism and increasing criticism of the Swiss mercenary system.

He attended the University of Vienna and the University of Basel, a scholarly center of Renaissance humanism.

He continued his studies while he served as a pastor in Glarus and later in Einsiedeln, where he was influenced by the writings of Erasmus.

In 1519, Zwingli became the Leutpriester (people’s priest) of the Grossmünster in Zürich where he began to preach ideas on reform of the Catholic Church.

In his first public controversy in 1522, he attacked the custom of fasting during Lent.

In his publications, he noted corruption in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, promoted clerical marriage, and attacked the use of images in places of worship.

Among his most notable contributions to the Reformation was his expository preaching, starting in 1519, through the Gospel of Matthew, before eventually using biblical exegesis to go through the entire New Testament, a radical departure from the Catholic mass.

In 1525, he introduced a new communion liturgy to replace the Mass.

He also clashed with the Anabaptists, which resulted in their persecution.

Historians have debated whether or not he turned Zürich into a theocracy.

The Reformation spread to other parts of the Swiss Confederation, but several cantons resisted, preferring to remain Catholic.

Zwingli formed an alliance of Reformed cantons which divided the Confederation along religious lines.

In 1529, a war was averted at the last moment between the two sides.

Meanwhile, Zwingli’s ideas came to the attention of Martin Luther and other reformers.

They met at the Marburg Colloquy and agreed on many points of doctrine, but they could not reach an accord on the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

In 1531, Zwingli’s alliance applied an unsuccessful food blockade on the Catholic cantons.

The cantons responded with an attack at a moment when Zürich was unprepared….

Zwingli wanted to enforce the Reformed sermon in the entire area of the Swiss Confederation.

He tried to break the resistance of central Switzerland by force of arms.

This was his undoing.

The Reformation in Switzerland was unstoppable.

It prevailed in church and state and gave the authorities more power.

But there were also opponents of the Reformation.

Zwingli and his innovations were sharply criticized, but that didn’t detract from its popularity.

The people flocked to the Grossmünster for its services.

Zwingli commented on theological, ecclesiastical and political questions in the pulpit.

He tried to renew the Church from the inside and to abolish the excesses and abuses with the consent of the Bishop and Pope.

His mission was to lead the entire Swiss Confederation to true Christianity.

He could not accept that the five places involved in the pension system continued to withhold the Reformed sermon from the central Swiss.

The struggle for the right belief, in his opinion, required courageous action.

Zwingli wrote:

“I believe that just as the Church came to life through blood, it can also be renewed through blood, not otherwise.”

The open break with the Pope and the Church became evident on 29 January 1523, when the Zürich Council obliged the pastors to preach the “pure gospel” based on Zwingli’s example.

At Easter 1525, the Evangelical Last Supper formulated by Zwingli was celebrated instead of Mass for the first time.

There were similar developments in other parts of the Swiss Confederation.

Zwingli was in contact with like-minded people.

Well-known exponents of the Reformation in the Swiss Confederation were:

• Johannes Dörig (1499 – 1526)
• Walter Klarer (1500 – 1567)
• Johannes Hess (1486 – 1537)
• Valentin Tschudi (1499 – 1555)
• Fridolin Brunner (1498 – 1570)
• Sebastian Hofmeister (1494 – 1533)

• Berchtold Haller (1492 – 1536)

• Niklaus Manuel (1484 – 1530)

• Konrad Pellikan (1478 – 1556)

• Wilhelm Reublin (1484 – 1549)
• Johannes Oekolampad (1482 – 1531)

• Johannes Comander (1484 – 1557)
• Jakob Salzmann (1484 – 1526)
• Dr. Joachim von Watt (aka Vadian) (1483 – 1551)

The disputes about what it meant to be a good Christian led to internal political tensions in the Swiss Confederation.

The 1524 Diet did not lead to an audible solution in dealing that the true gospel should be preached to all confederates.

The Swiss Confederation was weakened.

The Pope and the French tried to influence.

Johannes Eck (1486 – 1543), who fought on behalf of the Pope, and Martin Luther (1483 – 1546), took part in the 1526 Baden Disputation.

Eck needed nine places in the Confederation to ostracize and ban Zwingli as Emperor Charles V (1500 – 1558) had done with Luther in 1521.

However, the decision was never implemented.

Tensions continued.

Zwingli thought armed conflicts were possible.

He wanted to prevent the Reformed places from being reintegrated into the Catholic Church by military force.

He consulted with Zürich officers and at the beginning of 1526 he drafted a war plan for the attention of the Zürich authorities.

In February 1528, Bern officially converted to the Reformation.

Zwingli took note of this pleasure and satisfaction.

On Zwingli’s advice, Zürich concluded so-called “Christian castle rights” with the Reformed cities of Bern, Konstanz, St. Gallen, Biel-Bienne, Mühlhausen, Basel and Schaffhausen.

The cities pledged to help each other should they be attacked because of their beliefs.

As a reaction to this, the Catholic towns of Luzern, Uri, Schwyz, Zug and Unterwalden allied themselves with Ferdinand von Habsburg-Austria (1503 – 1564) in the “Christian Association“.

In the early summer of 1529 the situation came to a head:

Both parties committed attacks, the Unterwaldner in the Bernese Oberland, the Zürichers in St. Gallen, and the Schwyzers by executing Reformed pastor Jakob Kaiser (1485 – 1529).

The Zürich government decided to go to war on 4 June 1529.

On 9 June, 4,000 people in armor and guns were standing in Kappel am Albis on the border with the canton of Zug.

Zwingli and several like-minded pasters were there.

Zwingli wanted to ride of his own accord, but the army commanders would have preferred because of the hospitality against Zwingli that he would have stayed at home.

They appointed another pastor to be the field chaplain.

The troops of the Reformed towns numbered 30.000 men, the central Swiss had an army of 9,000 men.

In view of the great overwhelming power, the people of Zürich saw themselves marching into Zug and Luzern without much bloodshed, thus enforcing the free preaching of the Gospel and the prohibition of mercenaries and pensions throughout the entire Confederation.

But shortly before the attack, the Glarner Landammann Hans Aebli suddenly wanted to parley.

The central Swiss troops were not yet fully armed and one should refrain from a brotherly fight.

So a break was agreed and the Zürich authorities informed of the Glarus request.

Zwingli wanted to use the numerical superioriry of the Reformers at all costs.

He wrote from the field to the Zürich Council:

“Be steadfast and do not fear war.

We do not thirst for someone’s blood.

We are only concerned with one thing:

That the nerve of the oligarchs’ policy must be cut.

If that does not happen, neither the truth of the Gospel nor the servants of the Gospel safe with us.

We do not contemplate the cruel, but the good and patriotic.

We want to save people who otherwise perish from ignorance.

We thirst for freedom to be preserved.

So do not be afraid of our plans.“

As a condition for peace he suggested to the Council:

The Gospel should be able to be preached unhindered throughout the Confederation.

No more pensions should be accepted.

Those who brokered pensions in the five towns were to be punished while the Zürich troops were still in Kappel.

The Zürichers were to receive war compensation.

Schwyz had to make amends for the children of Pastor Kaiser of 1,000 guilders.

Zwingli’s admonitions and warnings to the Zürich authorities were not heard.

In the meantime, the central Swiss were ready to fight, but the fighting spirit waned on both sides.

The federal spirit gained the upper hand.

In addition, the men suffered from shortages on both sides.

The central Swiss lacked bread.

The Zürichers lacked milk.

A couple of people from central Switzerland put a bucket of milk on the border.

The people of Zürich got the hint:

They brought the chunks of bread for the soup, which went down in history as “Kappel milk soup“.

But the wait and the negotiations continued.

Since the assembly of 14 June in Aarau did not bring an agreement, the negotiations were conducted at Zwingli’s suggestion in front of the assembled troops in the vicinity of Kappel.

The ambassadors of the central Switzerland, Zürich and Zwingli expressed themselves.

Zwingli wrote to the Zürich authorities:

“For God’s sake, do something brave!“

The formulation of a peace agreement progressed resinously and after more than two weeks of negotiations the First Kappeler Landfrieden was finally proclaimed on 26 June 1529:

The Reformed sermon was allowed everywhere and the central Swiss cancelled with the Habsburgs.

This strengthened the “Christian castle rights” of the Reformers who felt themselves to be victorious.

Zwingli was on the one hand satisfied with the bloodless peace.

On the other hand, he did not trust the central Swiss.

The wording of the peace treaty left a lot of room for interpretation, which just two months later led to violent disputes at a parliamentary meeting.

In particular, there was a dispute over the sovereignty over belief in the individual areas.

Both sides demanded that the minority bow to the majority.

So it was allowed in Zürich to stick to the old faith and attend Catholic mass.

In central Switzerland, Reformers were not allowed to hold their own church services in communities that remained mostly Catholic.

There was also a quarrel about war compensation.

Instead of the 80,000 guilders demanded by Zürich and Bern, they awarded only 2,500 guilders from both places, which the central Swiss did not want to pay either.

The mutual trust was gone.

The Reformers were suspicious of the central Swiss, despite the contractual ban they were again in contact with the Habsburgs.

Zwingli and Zürich feared that Emperor Charles V and the Habsburgers could attack the Reformed areas in the Confederation and Germany with the support of central Switzerland.

Zwingli wanted to defend the Reformed areas of the Confederation and tried to forge an alliance with Hesse and other Reformed states in Germany, as well as with Venice and Milan.

His attempts were unsuccessful.

At the beginning of 1531, Zürich again asked the central Swiss to allow the Reformer sermon.

They felt their autonomy was threatened and rejected the request.

Zwingli urged the Zürich Council to force the people of central Switzerland to make this concession.

They were not convinced by the food boycott either.

At a meeting on 14 June 1531, the two parties – Zürich and Bern on one side, the five central Swiss towns on the other – sat opposite one another.

No agreement could be reached, negotiations were held on 20 June and 11 July with no results.

Zwingli could not stand the hesitation of the people of Zürich and decided on 26 July to leave the city immediately.

The influential lords of the city did not want to allow that to happen.

They literally begged him to stay.

After a period of reflection, Zwingli withdrew his resignation.

Since the negotiations between Zürich, Bern and central Switzerland were still going on, Zwingli arranged to meet the Bern representative before the meeting on 11 August and tried to win them over a war against the five central Swiss towns.

Shortly afterwards, Zwingli wrote in a letter:

“I am prepared for more than just one disaster.“

He felt himself at a loss.

“The retirees don’t want to be punished.”

They had too much popular support.

Instead of going to war, Bern advised in September 1531 to lift the supply block against central Switzerland.

Above: The Bern negotiations, 1531

The people of Zürich were informed of the preparations for war by the central Swiss from various quarters, but they remained inactive.

When, on 9 October 1531, a runner from Luzern demanded the delivery of the federal letters, Zürichers did not expect an attack.

Even after the central Swiss had already mobilized their troops, the people of Zürich still did not call their soldiers to arms.

Only when reports came in on 10 October that the central Swiss were at Baar did the Zürich-based vanguard send an advance guard to the border with Zug.

The central Swiss invaded and plundered Freiamt.

The Grand Council of Zürich now sent its main force to support the vanguard.

Instead of the expected 4,000 men, only 1,000 arrived.

Zwingli rode at their head as field preacher together with the captains.

More troops arrived.

Finally on 11 October 1531, 7,000 central Swiss troops faced 3,500 soldiers in Kappel.

The people of Zürich who hurried up in forced marches were exhausted even before the fight.

When the central Swiss attacked at 4 pm, they fled after a brief resistance.

Zwingli fell in the front ranks.

More than 500 people from Zürich died with him in this second battle of Kappel.

The central Swiss had fewer than a 100 deaths to mourn.

Zwingli did not immediately die, as the Menzinger Jahrezeitenbuch reported:

The central Swiss recognized the wounded man and offered him a confessor.

Zwingli refused.

Then a captain killed him with a halberd.

The following day, “martial law was held over the dead body of this dishonourable God and the unfaithful, perjured, vow-breaking arch heretics and seducers of the people“.

As a result, Zwingli was “first cut off as a traitor to the entire Confederation by the Luzern executioner and then burned to ashes as an arch heretic“.

As a resulr, Zwingli was “first cut off as a traitor to the entire Confederation by the Luzern executioner and then burned to ashes as an arch heretic“.

Zwingli’s death triggered a fall in friends and followers in Zürich and raised hope among his opponents, but the majority of the population wanted to hold on to the Reformation.

As a result of Zwingli’s interference in urban and federal politics, a clear separation of religions and politics was sought.

Pastors were instructed not to interfere in politics, but to concentrate on the preaching of God’s word and to work for peace and tranquility.

Anyone who did not comply was dismissed by the Zürich Council.

The Council appointed Heinrich Bullinger (1504 – 1575) as the new pastor at the Grossmünster on 9 December 1531.

In doing so, he fulfilled Zwingli’s wish:

He had recommended Bullinger as his successor if he did not return from Kappel.

The Second Kappel War was not ended by Zwingli’s death.

More defeats for the people of Zürich and Bern followed on the battlefield.

After the defeat, the forces of Zürich regrouped and attempted to occupy the Zugerberg, and some of them camped on the Gubel hill near Menzingen.

Following the defeat at Kappel, Bern and other Reformed Cantons marched to rescue Zürich.

Between 15 and 21 October, a large Reformed army marched up the Reuss Valley to outside of Baar.

At the same time, the Catholic army was now encamped on the slopes of the Zugerberg.

The combined Zürich-Bern army attempted to send 5,000 men over Sihlbrugg and Menzingen to encircle the army on the Zugerberg.

However, the Reformed army marched slowly due to poor discipline and looting.

By the night of 23–24 October, they had only reached Gubel at Menzingen.

That night they were attacked by a small Catholic force from Aegeri and driven off.

About 600 Protestant soldiers died in the attack and the panicked retreat that followed.

This defeat destroyed much of the combined Zürich – Bern army and, faced with increasing desertion, it had to retreat on 3 November back down the Reuss to Bremgarten.

The retreat left much of Lake Zürich (Zürichsee) and Zürich itself unprotected.

Zürich now pushed for a rapid peace settlement.

On 20 November 1531, the Second Treaty of Kappel was concluded on the mediation of the federal states that had remained neutral.

It was stipulated that each canton could determine its own denomination.

The Abbey of St. Gallen was taken from Zürich and restored.

The “Christian castle law” of the Reformed cantons repeatedly led to tensions and disputes.

After a long domination of the Catholic towns, the Reformed towns of Bern and Zürich gained the upper hand in the Swiss Confederation in 1712 in the Second Villmerger War (or Toggenburg War) (12 April – 11 August 1712).

Until the French Revolution, there were always new denominational disputes.

They also played a role in the Sonderbund War (3 – 29 November 1847), which led to the establishment of the Swiss federal state in 1848.

Zürich to Kappel am Albis, Switzerland, Friday 13 March 2018

I am not a religious man, though I do respect the morality and traditions that religion tries to maintain.

I am considered by statistics as a man without religion, though I do consider myself a fairly moral man who was raised in the tenets of Christianity – my foster mother was a non-practising Baptist, my foster father was a non-practising Catholic, my foster sister and her family are fundamentalist Christians – I do not adhere to the notion that there is only one faith to follow to salvation – if there is indeed salvation at all.

My following in the footsteps of Huldrych Zwingli was far less a pilgrimage of faith as it was a pedestrian project of walking a path divided into many stages and accomplished in separate stages when time and money permitted.

I was not searching for God or holy illumination but rather I simply wished to get a sense of a historical period before my own and I felt that there was no better way to get a sense of Zwingli than to march along with his memory.

I have always preferred walking to any other method of transportation as the slowest of journeys generates the deepest experiences.

I have always held that the moment one puts wheels beneath them the journey loses its significance and the destination becomes the primary goal.

I wanted to imagine what the places I saw now appeared back then.

How did it come to this?

What did the people of yesterday think?

How did they feel?

How different were they from us?

How similar to us were they?

The Steiner book had led me in eight stages since 11 October 2017 from Wildhaus to Wollishofen in downtown Zürich.

Today would be the final march that would take me from Zürich to Uetliberg, Hotel Uto Kulm, Balderen, Felsenegg, Buchenegg, Näfenhüser, Albispass, the Albis Hochwacht, Schnabellücken and Kappel am Albis.

From the Haus zur Sul, at Kirchgasse 22, Zwingli’s official residence from 1522 to 1525, the last three years of his life, I walk from there to the Zürich Hauptbahnhof (Grand Central Station), to catch the Uetliberg train and the official start of this last leg of the Steiner trail.

The Uetliberg railway line (Uetlibergbahn) is a passenger railway line which runs from the central station in Zürich through the city’s western outskirts to the summit of the Uetliberg.

The route serves as line S10 of the Zürich S-Bahn (street railway/trams) with the Zürcher Verkehrsverband (Zürich Transport Commission)’s (ZVV) standards zonal fares applying.

The line was opened in 1875 and electrified in 1923.

In 1990 it was extended to its current terminus at Zürich Hauptbahnhof (Central Station).

Today it is owned by the Sihltal Zürich Uetliberg Bahn, a company that also owns the Sihltal line and operates other transport services.

The line has a maximum gradient of 7.9% and is the steepest standard gauge adhesion railway in Europe.

It carries both leisure and local commuter traffic.

The Uetliberg line shares a common terminus with the Sihltal line, utilising a dedicated underground island platform (tracks 21 and 22) at Zürich Hauptbahnhof.

There is no rail connection to the rest of the station, but the platform is served by the same complex of pedestrian subways and subterranean shopping malls that link the station’s other platforms.

From the Hauptbahnhof to Zürich Giesshübel station the two lines share a common twin-track line, initially in tunnel, partly running along and under the Sihl River.

The current Selnau station is located in this under-river tunnel section.

Although the two lines diverge at Giesshübel station, and the depot for Uetliberg trains is located there, Uetliberg line trains do not stop.

Just beyond Giesshübel, the line serves Zürich Binz station.

The line then commences a long, steep but relatively straight climb through the Zurich suburbs, serving the stations of Zürich Friesenberg, Zürich Schweighof and Zürich Triemli.

This section of line is single track, with a double track section between Binz and Friesenberg.

Triemli station is adjacent to the Triemli Hospital , one of Zürich’s main hospitals, and is the terminus for some trains on the line.

The station has two tracks and two platforms.

Beyond Triemli the line enters a more wooded and hilly environment, and executes a broad U-shaped route to the summit of Uetliberg, which is 5.9 km (3.7 mi) from Triemli by rail, but only 1.5 km (0.93 mi) away in a direct line.

This section of line serves Uitikon Waldegg and Ringlikon stations, and is single track, with double track sections between Triemli and Uitikon Waldegg, and at Ringlikon.

Uetliberg station lies some 650 m (2,130 ft) from, and 56 m (184 ft) below, the summit of the Uetiberg.

The station has two terminal tracks, and a substantial station building, including a restaurant.

A refuge castle existed on the Uetliberg as early as the Bronze Age or an oppidum in Celtic times.

Various archaeological finds such as ramparts and the Prince’s grave mound Sonnenbühl can still be visited today. 

From 1644 it was the location of a high watch.

The Uetliberg and the nearby Albiskamm were the location of six castles in the Middle Ages, of which only remnants are left today: Uetliburg, Sellenbüren, Frisenberg, Baldern, Schnabelburg and Manegg.

Uotelenburg was first mentioned in a document in 1210. 

In 1267 the people of Zürich allegedly destroyed the Uetliburg under Rudolf von Habsburg (1218 – 1291) in the course of the Regensberg feud (1268 – 1269), but this is not considered historically certain. 

Twice (perhaps) Zwingli ascended Uetliberg in 1531 en route to battle.

That a man of the church sought bloodshed leaves me disappointed, but lives had already been lost in Zürich in the name of his religious reforms.

In 1750 the poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724 – 1803) climbed the mountain.

He too would cause others to doubt his religious convictions.

Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock grew up as the eldest of 17 children in a pietistic family. 

His father, Gottlieb Heinrich, the son of a lawyer, was a commissioner and had leased the estate of Friedeburg, so that Friedrich Gottlieb spent his childhood here from 1732 until the lease was given up in 1736. 

His mother Anna Maria had the Bad Langensalza council chamberlain and merchant Johann Christoph Schmidt (1659 – 1711) as a father.

After attending the Quedlinburg grammar school, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock came to the Fürstenschule in Schulpforte at the age of 15 , where he received a thorough humanistic education. 

Klopstock read the Greek and Latin classics: Homer, Pindar, Virgil and Horace. 

Here he also made his first own poetic attempts and wrote a first plan for the Messiah, a religious epic.

In 1745 he began studying Protestant theology in Jena, where he also wrote the first three chants of the Messiah, which he initially laid out in prose. 

After moving to Leipzig, the work was reworked in hexameters the following year. 

The appearance of the first parts in the articles in Bremen in 1748 caused a sensation and became the model for the Messiad literature of its era. 

In Leipzig, Klopstock also created the first odes. 

After completing his theology studies, he took a private tutor in Langensalza (according to the custom of all theology candidates). 

During the two years of his stay in Bad Langensalza, Klopstock experienced the passionate love for the girl Maria-Sophia Schmidt, the intoxication of hope, the despair of disappointment, and finally the elegy of renunciation. 

This led to, during these two years, his composing the most beautiful of his earlier odes for the unapproachable lover.

The publication of the odes sparked a storm of enthusiasm among opponents of the “reasonable” poetics of Johann Christoph Gottsched, which had prevailed up until then. 

It was the hour of birth of pure poetry.

Contacts were made with Johann Jakob Bodmer (1698 – 1783), who invited Klopstock to Zürich in 1750.

Klostock gladly accepted the invitation from Bodmer, the Swiss translator of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, where Klopstock was initially treated with every kindness and respect and rapidly recovered his spirits.

Bodmer, however, was disappointed to find in the young poet of the Messiah a man of strong worldly interests, and a coolness sprang up between the two men.

After eight months, Klopstock went at the invitation of King Frederick V of Denmark (1723 – 1766). 

With Friedrich’s support he was able to complete his work. 

This granted him a life pension of 400 (later 800) thalers a year. 

He spent three years of his life in Denmark.

On 10 June 1754, Klopstock married Margreta (Meta) Moller (1728 – 1758), whom he met in Hamburg in 1751 while traveling to Copenhagen. 

She died of a stillbirth on 28 November 1758. 

For thirty years Klopstock could not forget her and sang about her in his elegies. 

It was not until old age (1791) that he married Johanna Elisabeth Dimpfel von Winthem (1747-1821), a niece of Meta Moller.

From 1759 to 1762 Klopstock lived in Quedlinburg, Braunschweig and Halberstadt, then travelled to Copenhagen, where he stayed until 1771 and exerted a great influence on the cultural life in Denmark. 

In addition to the Messiah, which finally appeared in full in 1773, he wrote dramas, including Hermanns Schlacht (Herman’s Battle) (1769). 

He then returned to Hamburg. 

In 1776, he moved temporarily to Karlsruhe at the invitation of Margrave Karl Friedrich von Baden (1728 – 1811). 

After his death on 14 March 1803 at the age of 78, Klopstock was buried on 22 March 1803 with great public sympathy in the church cemetery in Ottensen.

In Quedlinburg, the Klopstockhaus provides information about the poet. 

In 1831, a memorial was inaugurated in the local park in Brühl.

As a father of the German nation-state idea, Klopstock was a proponent of the French Revolution, which he described in the 1789 poem Know Yourself as the “noblest deed of the century”. 

Klopstock also called on the Germans for a revolution. 

In 1792, the French National Assembly accepted him as an honorary citizen.

Later, however, he castigated the excesses of the revolution in the 1793 poem The Jacobins.

Here he criticized the Jacobin regime, which had emerged from the French Revolution, as a snake that winds through all of France.

Klopstock’s enlightened utopia The German Republic of Scholars (1774) is a concept that installs an educated elite in power for the princely rule, which is regarded as incapable of governing. 

The republic is to be ruled by “aldermen“, “guilds” and “the people“, whereby the former – as the most learned – should have the greatest powers, and guilds and people accordingly less. 

The “rabble”, on the other hand, would only get a “shouter” in the state parliament, because Klopstock did not trust the people to have popular sovereignty. 

Education is the highest good in this republic and qualifies its bearer for higher offices. 

This republic would do extremely well in accordance with the learned approach and would be pacifistic too:

Klopstock estimates sniffing, scornful laughter and frowning as punishments between the scholars. 

This made special demands on the executors:

“Whoever wants to become one of them must have two main characteristics, namely a great skill in being very expressive, and then a very special larval face, whereby the size and shape of the nose come into consideration. 

In addition to this, the scornful laugher must have a very strong and at the same time rough voice. 

It is customary to release Schreyer from being expelled from the country and to raise him to a sneer if his nose has the necessary properties for this task.” 

Klopstock’s conception of Heaven, shaped by the scientific achievements of NIcolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543) and Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630), is not that of an ancient sky at rest in itself, whose stars are gods and heroes. 

Its celestial sphere is rather a world harmony, a rhythm and symmetry of the spheres. 

So it says in the first song of the Messiah:

In the middle of this gathering of the suns the sky rises,
round, immeasurable, the archetype of the worlds, the abundance of
all visible beauty, which, like fleeting brooks,
pours out, imitating it through the infinite space.
So, under the Eternal, it revolves around itself.

While he is walking,
the spherical harmonies resound from him, on the wings of the wind, to the shores of the suns
high. The songs of the divine harpists
resound with power, as if animating. These agreed tones lead the
immortal hearer past many a high praise song.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832) will take up this picture again in Faust. 

The “Prologue in Heaven” begins like this:

The sun resounds in the old fashion
in the fraternal song of contests,
And its prescribed journey
completes it with a thunderous walk.

Klopstock gave the German language new impulses and can be seen as a trailblazer for the generation that followed him. 

He was the first to use hexameter in German poetry with his Messiah, and his examination of the “German hexameter“, as he called it, led him to his doctrine of the word foot (the smallest rhythmic unit. 

This paved the way for free rhythms such as those used by Goethe and Friedrich Hölderlin (1770 – 1843) for example. 

Klopstock also fought against the strict use of rhyme according to the Martin Opitz (1597 – 1639) school. 

Opitz’s aim was to elevate German poetry on the basis of humanism and ancient forms to an art object of the highest order, and he succeeded in creating a new kind of poetics. 

In his commemorative speech on the 100th anniversary of Opitz’s death in 1739, Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700 – 1766) called him the first who had succeeded in bringing the German language to a level that met all the demands of sophisticated diction and eliminated everyday language, which allowed him to advance of the French. 

With his reflections on language, style and verse art, Opitz gave German poetry a formal basis. In doing so, he drew up various laws that served as guidelines and standards for all German poetry for over a century:

• He demanded strict observance of the meter, taking into account the natural word accent.
• He rejected impure rhymes. (Probably rejected dirty limericks, too!)
• He forbade word abbreviations and contractions.
• He also excluded foreign words.

Opitz’s aesthetic principles included the Horace (65 – 8 BCE) Principle:

“Poetry, while it is pleasurable, must be useful and instructive at the same time.” 

Klopstock gave the poet’s profession a new dignity by exemplifying the artistic autonomy of the poet, and thus freed poetry from didactic poems. 

Klopstock is considered to be the founder of experiential poetry and German irrationalism. 

His work extended over large parts of the age of the Enlightenment. 

Unlike most Enlighteners, however, he was not committed to reason, but to sensitivity. 

In 1779 he coined the term inwardness, which he called one of nine elements of poetic representation:

“Inwardness, or highlighting the actual innermost nature of the thing.” 

Furthermore, he is considered an important pioneer for the movement of Sturm und Drang – literally “storm and desire”, though usually translated as “storm and stress“, where individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion were given free expression.

In The Sorrows of Young Werther, Klopstock’s effect is felt in the writing of Goethe:

“We went to the window, it thundered to the side and the wonderful rain rustled on the land, and the most refreshing fragrance rose to us in the fullness of warm air. 

She stood on her elbow and her eyes penetrated the area, she looked up at the sky and at me, I saw her eyes full of tears, she put her hand on mine and said – “Klopstock!” 

I sank into the stream of sensations which she poured out on me in this loosing. 

I could not stand, leaned on her hand and kissed it with the most delightful tears. 

And looked at her eye again –

Noble! 

You would have seen your admiration in this look, and now I would never hear your name, which has so often been desecrated, mentioned again.“

In spite of all this, the young Lessing registers:

“Who will not praise a Klopstock?
But will everyone read it? – No!
We want to be less exalted
and read more diligently.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

Klopstock reminds me of Zwingli.

Both strong men, both well-educated, both advocating radical change.

In 1812 the Uetliberg watch was erected.

The Alt Uetliberg is a small farm west below the former Annaburg. 

Mentioned in a document 400 years ago and probably much older, the mountain home is a witness of old farming culture on the Uetliberg. 

In 1984 the canton of Zürich wanted to demolish the building. 

A petition successfully opposed this. 

Today the buildings serve as a scout home. 

A wooden ski jump was built in 1954 south of the Alt Uetliberg farmhouse . 

A hill record of 41.5 meters was achieved in the 1970s. 

Due to the frequent lack of snow and decreasing public interest, the ski jump was demolished in 1994.

During the Second World War, the Uetliberg and Waldegg area was fortified with over 100 bunkered shelters as part of the first army position.

In 1815 an inn opened in the former Hochwacht.

In 1838 Friedlich Bluntschli acquired the summit area from his cousin Gerber Bluntschli

The Zürich architect Johann Caspar Breitinger built the first spa house for Friedlich Bluntschli. 

In 1840 Friedrich Beyel opened the Uetliberg guest house and spa. 

Friedrich von Dürler was the son of Xaver von Dürler, a businessman from Lucerne, and Barbara Gossweiler from Zurich. 

After the early death of his father, he trained as a businessman, but soon gave up the profession to devote himself to archeology and gymnastics. 

He was close friends with Ferdinand Keller, the founder of the Antiquarian Society of Zürich, and as treasurer of the association took part in excavations on the Lindenhof in Zurich and the Uetliberg. 

Together with the theologian Alexander Schweizer, Dürler was one of the early promoters of gymnastics based on the ideas of the father of German gymnastics Friedrich Ludwig Jahn. 

From 1836 the bachelor served as secretary for the Zurich poor relief. 

In September 1838 Dürler became a member of the Swiss Society for Natural Research.

On 19 August 1837, he had the chamois hunters and mountain farmers Bernhard and Gabriel Vögeli and Thomas Thut from Linthal take him up to the Glarner Tödi to prove their first ascent of the peak from the north on 11 August 1837.

Dürler is still honored today with a plaque in Linthal.

Dürler and friends climbed the Uetliberg, where the first restaurant had just opened. 

On 8 March 1840, this mountaineer, naturalist and Zürich secretary for the poor, Friedrich von Dürler (1804 – 1840) fell to his death after visiting the inn while descending. 

On the basis of a bet, he slipped down a steep gully on his alpine stick, fell over a rock and died. 

The friends erected a memorial stone with a plaque on the ridge east of today’s Uto Staffel Restaurant, the Dürlerstein.

Inscription:

Here
Friedrich von Dürler fell down and died on
March 8th MDCCCXL
Mourning friends
set this stone for him

In 1873 the hotelier Caspar Fürst bought the mountain inn.

The existing house was enlarged and a hotel was built to the north of it. 

In 1927 the Uetliberg Hotel was taken over by the City of Zürich and the ETH Zürich-Lehrwald (teaching forest) was established. 

In 1935 the Niedermann brothers, both major butchers in Zürich, bought the hotel. 

In 1943 it was closed. 

In 1973 the hotel came into the possession of the general contractor Karl Steiner. 

In 1983 the Swiss Bank Corporation bought the Uto Kulm mountain inn.

In 1999 Giusep Fry bought the hotel with a lookout tower. 

He subsequently carried out various modifications that were declared illegal by the Federal Supreme Court.

Tourist development began in the 19th century with the Uetlibergbahn (opened in 1875) and the construction of various hotels and guest houses on the Uetliberg and the Albis chain. 

Today the traditional Hotel Uto Kulm and the Uetliberg observation tower, open to the public all year round, stand on the summit of the Uetliberg.

Car-free Üetliberg is accessed by the S10 line of the Sihital-Zürich-Uetliberg Bahn, which is part of the Zurich S-Bahn network, is Europe’s steepest standard-gauge adhesion railway, running from Zürich Main Station to the Uetliberg station – a ten-minute walk below the summit. 

From the train station, the Uetliberg – Felsenegg Planet Path leads to Felsenegg, where the Adliswil – Felsenegg aerial cableway leads down to Adliswil.

Various hiking trails lead from the city of Zurich to the summit in around an hour:

• The varied Denzlerweg leads from Albisguetli (tram line 13 terminus) in a fairly straight direction to the summit. It is named after a baker Denzler who is said to have brought his rolls to the Hotel on the summit every morning on this route and is said to have made this route about 4,000 times.

• Also from Albisgüetli, the Laternenweg leads a little further west onto the ridge. It takes its name from its earlier gas lantern lighting, which has been electrified since 2003.

• From Triemli (tram line 14 terminus) the Hohensteinweg leads up a mountain shoulder, which is particularly popular as a toboggan run in winter.

• A forest road leads from Uitikon-Waldegg (parking lot) to the summit. This path has the least incline.

The Uetliberg is particularly popular in winter, as its summit is often above the Zürich fog. 

In the past, in such inversion weather conditions, the tram lines that go to the foot of the Uetliberg carried the sign “Uetliberg hell”. 

In winter, some of the hiking trails are used as toboggan runs.

Swisscom operates an important telecommunications system on the Uetliberg (the Uetliberg television tower) for the transmission of radio and television programs.

The Uetliberg offers – especially from the Uetliberg observation tower on the mountain top – a view of the entire city and Lake Zürich. 

When the weather is good, the view extends to the north as far as Hohentwiel, and from east to south to Glarus, Graubünden and the Bernese Alps. 

Other mountain ranges in Germany (the Black Forest / Schwarzwald), France (Vosges) and Austria can also be seen.

The Felsenegg (810m) is a lookout point on the Albis chain and the mountain station of the Adliswil – Felsenegg aerial cableway southwest of Zürich.

The Albis is one of the most important local recreation and hiking areas in the greater Zürich area. 

Via the Felsenegg, the hiking trail from Uetliberg leads along the Albis ridge in an easterly direction to the Albis Pass, starting with the Uetliberg – Felsenegg Planet Trail. 

The Uetliberg – Felsenegg Planet Trail is a hiking trail in the canton of Zürich on the Albis. 

The path leads from the Uetliberg railway station of the Uetlibergbahn to Staffel, Annaburg, above the Fallätsche via Mädikon to the Felsenegg station of the Adliswil – Felsenegg aerial cableway, via Felsenegg to Buchenegg. 

The duration of the hike is around two hours.

The trail was designed by Arnold von Rotz and opened on 26 April 1979. 

The patronage was taken over by the Astronomical Society Urania Zürich.

The path is laid out on a scale of 1:1 billion and thus offers a clear representation of the sizes and distances in the solar system. 

One meter of the model corresponds to one million kilometers in reality. 

The planetary path includes not only the Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, planets Mercury, but also the dwarf planets Ceres and Pluto.

Above: Representation of the Solar System – We are the third rock from the Sun.

The planet models are attached to boulders on the Linth or Reuss glacier along the way. 

The smaller planet models were poured into glass and set into a niche in the boulder, the larger ones attached to the top of the boulder. 

A board on each planet provides information about its position in the solar system and additional information, such as equatorial diameter, rotational speed, orbital speed, orbit circumference, and the like. 

As a model of the sun, a yellow sphere with a diameter of 1.39 meters was attached to a pole, which can be seen clearly from the first planetary models .

Dwarf planet Pluto is represented with three stations because of its strongly elliptical orbit:

The first position corresponds to the perihelion, while it lies ahead of Neptune. 

The second position at Felsenegg corresponds to the mean distance and the third station near Buchenegg corresponds to the aphelion.

The next star, Proxima Centauri, would be around 40,113 kilometers away on the same scale.

(For comparison: the circumference of the Earth is around 40,030 kilometers).

A steep forest path built between 1908 and 1912 leads from Adliswil up to Felsenegg.

Adliswil is located in the lower Sihl valley between Albis and Zimmerberg on the border with the city of Zürich. 

The forest covers a third of the municipal area, the settlement area and traffic almost half, 20% are still used for agriculture.

The graves from the early Middle Ages, which were found in the Grüt near the border with the city of Zurich, give evidence of settlements. 

The slopes of Zimmerberg and Albis were settled first, as the valley floor along the Sihl was repeatedly endangered by floods.

A bridge over the Sihl has been documented since 1475. 

The first mill with a weir (dam) is also mentioned in the 15th century. 

The manorial power lay with the Grossmünster and Frauminister of Zürich, as well as the monasteries of Muri and Rüti, and passed to the city of Zürich in 1406.

From 1942 to 1945, the second largest internment camp in Switzerland, which was set up as a result of the German occupation of southern France, was located in Adliswil. 

It was housed in the rooms of a disused mechanical silk weaving mill. 

In particular, German Jews who had previously found refuge in southern France tried to escape to Switzerland afterwards. 

The transit camp, which, despite its size, was little known among the population because it was shielded by the military, offered space for around 500 people. 

The community experienced a strong growth spurt in the 19th century through industrialization, during which a large spinning company, the Mechanische Seidenweberei Adliswil (MSA), was built. 

The village was also home to the chocolate manufacturer Norma, which later became part of the Cima – Norma SA company in Dangio – Torre.

Today many of the residents work in Zürich. 

The majority of the resident companies operate in the tertiary sector. 

In particular, insurance companies (Generali, Swiss Reinsurance Company) have located part of their administration in Adliswil. 

The Liechtenstein tool manufacturer Hilti has its Swiss headquarters in Adliswil. 

A total of around 5,000 people in all sectors work in Adliswil.

Some personalities of Adliswil:

• Stefan Bachmann is a Swiss-American author of novels and short stories.

His debut novel The Peculiar was published in 2012.

Bachmann was born in Colorado, but soon moved with his family to Adliswil. 

He was home schooled by his American mother and four siblings through high school. 

He attended the Zürich Conservatory since he was 11, and then the Zürich University of the Arts, where he studied organ and composition. 

His first novel was published when he was 19 years old. 

He writes his books in English.

The Peculiar is about the opening of a portal to the fairy world, as a result of which a multitude of magical creatures come into the human world. 

Since the portal closed, the fairies and elves have been prevented from returning and have to live side by side with the humans. 

Children of a human and a fairy are called “the Peculiar” and are especially outlawed as crossbreeds on both sides.

Bartholomew and his little sister Henrietta “Hettie” Kettle are mixed race whose fairy father has left the family. 

They live with their mother on Krähengasse in Bath and are almost never allowed to leave the house, as very few people shy away from killing “mixed race children”. 

One day Bartholomew observes a lady in a plum-colored dress from the window of a secret attic room who is picking up another mongrel boy from the neighbors. 

When Bartholomew follows her, he is magically wrapped in feathers and taken into a distant, noble room, which he leaves shortly afterwards in the same way.

Arthur Jelliby is a parliamentarian and member of the Council of State in London, which also includes a fairy elite. 

For some time now, mongrels have been mysteriously disappearing and then found dead, which most of the Members of Parliament don’t care much. 

When Jelliby is invited to the fairy attorney general Lickerish, he gets lost in his house in a corridor and is tracked down by Lickerish’s fairy butler, who suspects him to have spied. 

By chance, Jelliby overhears Lickerish in an office and comes across a diabolical plan to open the portal to the fairy world in order to deliver England to the fairies. 

To do this, Lickerish needs a certain mixed-race child that the lady in the plum-colored dress named Melusine is supposed to get for him. 

In the meantime, Bartholomew has tried to conjure up a house ghost and instead leads Lickerish’s henchmen to him, who kidnap Hettie. 

At the same time, Jelliby arrives in Crow Alley and comes across Bartholomew, who is desperately looking for his sister. 

Together they make their way to the fairy market to get weapons for defense, and then to a lonely place in the forest where an old fairy lives in a trailer and tells them about Lickerish’s plans. 

He wants to invade all magical beings from the fairy world to England in order to subdue people and to rule over them.

Bartholomew and Jelliby travel back to London, where they locate an old warehouse with access to an airship over the city. 

That is where Lickerish is holding Hettie. 

He is responsible for the disappearance and death of the other mixed race children because he was looking for the right one. 

Hettie is the portal to the fairy world and is supposed to open it that night. 

When it happens, Bartholomew and Jelliby join them. 

They want to prevent the portal from opening, but fail, and Hettie disappears into the fairy world together with the fairy butler. 

The story ends with Bartholomew’s decision to bring Hettie home at all costs.

Bachmann wrote The Peculiar in English at the age of 16, inspired by The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, among others. 

According to his own information, he needed six months for the first version with 400 pages, plus another six months for the revision. 

An agent sent the manuscript to US publisher Harper Collins, who published it on 18 September 2012. 

According to some media reports, the novel quickly became a bestseller in the US, which also led to the film industry’s interest in film rights. 

Along with the publication, a book trailer was produced, the musical accompaniment of which was composed by Bachmann himself. 

A reading tour through the USA and a blog tour through Asia followed in 2013 and brought the author an income in the six-figure range. 

The book has been translated into seven languages, including Czech, Polish, and Spanish. 

The German translation was published on 26 February 2014 by the Swiss Diogenes Verlag.

Both the press, as well as representatives of fantasy literature judged The Peculiar mainly positive. 

The New York Times wrote in September 2012 that The Peculiar was “a story young fantasy buffs are sure to enjoy”.

The Los Angeles Times wrote “Bachmann’s prose is so elegantly witty.”

Publishers Weekly described the novel as “limitless reading pleasure for readers of all ages.” 

Christopher Paolini, author of the fantasy series Eragon, praised the book as “swift, strong and entertaining, highly recommanded”.

Percy Jackson author Rick Riordan said:

“Stefan Bachmann breathes fresh life into ancient magic.”

• Margrit Baur (1937 – 2017) was a Swiss writer and secretary.

She was born and raised in Adliswil.

After teachers’ college, she attended a drama school in Vienna, where she also appeared in small theatres for a few years after completing her training.

Back in Switzerland, she worked in various “bread and butter” jobs in order to be able to devote herself freely to writing.

She brought up this juxtaposition of professional life and “real” life above all in Survival (1981) and Downtime(1983)

Baur lived in Gattikon near Zürich until 2017.

• Franz Fassbind (1919 – 2003) was a Swiss writer, playwright and journalist.

Franz Fassbind was the son of photographer and small publisher Bernardin Fassbind (1887 – 1954) and Lina Fassbind-Marty (1884 – 1931) in Unteriberg in the canton of Schwyz. 

He grew up in poor conditions, first in the Engadine, then in Zürich’s industrial district and in Wipkingen. 

Later he attended the collegiate school of Einsiedeln Monastery and the Jesuit college in Feldkirch. 

During these years Franz Fassbind wrote his first poems and small compositions. 

After dropping out of high school, he studied music at the Zürich Conservatory from 1936 and German studies at the University of Zürich. 

Without ever finishing a degree, he worked as a freelance journalist, writer and composer. 

His first poems were published in 1936, Radio Beromünster broadcast his first radio play at Christmas 1938, and his first novel was published three years later.

Franz Fassbind became known primarily for his work for Swiss Radio. 

His radio plays and features had a formative effect on the medium from 1938 to 1974. 

Just as important was the series of programs he initiated, “The International Forum”, in which he allowed well-known scientists to have their say. 

His radio reviews in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung found a wide readership. 

His journalistic work is also an expression of the spiritual defense movement.

(The spiritual defense movement is the cross-party strengthening of values ​​and customs perceived as “Swiss” in order to ward off totalitarian ideologies. 

At first it was directed primarily against National Socialism (Nazism) and Facism, later during the Cold War against Communism. 

Even when intellectual national defense was no longer actively pursued by the authorities, the cultural, anti-totalitarian values ​​remained in effect.

Swiss politicians still use the terms and metaphors of intellectual national defense today.) 

In the Dramaturgy of the Radio Play published in 1943 , he also reflected on his radio work theoretically.

In 1956 he turned to the medium of film. 

For The Art of the Etruscans he provided both the script and the music. 

The work earned him the 1st Film Prize of the City of Zürich. 

From 1948 Fassbind’s main poetic work, Die Hohe Messe (The High Mass), was published in demanding terzins – an Italian rhyming scheme wherein each stanza consists of three verses – based on Dante. 

There, as in his novels from the post war period, the focus is on dealing with Catholicism in today’s world.

Fassbind married Gertrud Schmucki in 1941. 

Their only child, a daughter, Ursula was born in 1943. 

The family lived in Adliswil near Zürich, where Franz Fassbind died on 9 July 2003 at the age of 84.

Peter Wild published an edition of his work at Walter Verlag in Olten.

• Hannes Gruber (1928 – 2016) was a Swiss painter.

Hannes Gruber was the second son of Paul and Erna Gruber-Hartmann. 

He spent his youth and school days in Oberrieden on Lake Zürich. 

In 1943 – 1944 he attended the Zürich School of Applied Arts (1883 – 2007). 

From 1944 to 1948 he did an apprenticeship with Swiss bookseller Orell Füssli in Zürich, at the same time he attended courses in the painting at the Zürich School of Applied Arts. 

After moving to Grevasalvas in the Upper Engadine (1948) he worked there as a freelance painter. 

In 1953 his son Stefan (now known as filmmaker Steff Gruber) was born. 

After returning to Zürich (1954), Hannes Gruber opened his own graphic studio. 

In 1957 his daughter Ursina was born. 

In 1968 his daughter Sandrina was born. 

The next year Gruber opened a studio on the Hirzel, a Swiss pass in the foothills of cantons Zürich and Zug, between Wadenswil and Sihlbrugg. 

In 1972 he moved to the Engadin again, this time to Sils Baselgia. 

He moved into a studio in Bondo. 

Gruber made his first painting trip to Northern Italy in 1949. 

A study trip took him to the Netherlands in 1950 and another painting trip to Denmark in 1952. 

He made further trips to Italy (1958) to Bergamo and Verona, then to Sicily (1966) and Tuscany (1967). 

A summer stay in Spain (1969) earned him a commission for several wall paintings on a building on Ibiza. 

He travelled to New York in 1974.

Above: Images of New York City

 

Another summer stay in Italy took place in 1977..

His first watercolours of landscapes from the area around Oberrieden were created in 1940.

He painted in oil for the first time in 1942.

Above: Oberrieden 

In 1950 he received an order for large murals for the Olma – the annual agricultural fair in St. Gallen. 

In 1966 he illustrated an edition of Tristan by Thomas Mann (1875 – 1955). 

In 1971 he was commissioned with a three-dimensional wall design in the Fuhr schoolhouse in Wädenswil.

• Peter Holenstein (1946 – 2019) was a Swiss journalist and author.

In his journalistic work, for example in the Swiss weekly magazine Weltwoche, Peter Holenstein dealt in particular with topics relating to criminal justice and crime, the perpetrator-victim problem and the causes of violent crimes. 

His book The Incredible: The Murderous Life of Werner Ferrari in 2007 led to a review of the child murder case of Ruth Steinmann at the Baden District Court, which ended in Ferrari’s acquittal. 

Werner Ferrari is a Swiss serial killer. 

As a five-time child murderer, he is one of the most famous prison inmates in Switzerland. 

For example, he kidnapped or lured children away from public festivals, abused some of the victims and strangled them.

Ferrari grew up in various children’s and youth homes and was considered an introvert. 

He performed various jobs as an unskilled worker.

In 1971 Ferrari committed his first infanticide:

In Reinach (BL), he murdered 10-year-old Daniel Schwan. 

Ferrari was sentenced to ten years in prison and released early after eight years in prison from the Zürich prison in Regensdorf.

Between 1980 and 1989, 21 children disappeared in Switzerland, 14 of whom were found abused and murdered. 

Seven children, including Peter Roth (8) from Mogelsberg (SG), Sarah Oberson (5) from Saxon (VS), and Edith Trittenbass (9) from Gass-Wetzikon (TG), are still missing today despite intensive searches. 

On 30 August 1989, four days after Fabienne Imhof’s murder, Werner Ferrari called the police – and stated that he had nothing to do with her death. 

Shortly afterwards he was arrested in his apartment in Olten, and he made confessions in four cases. 

Ferrari vehemently denied the murder of 12-year-old Ruth Steinmann, who was found on 16 May 1980 in a wooded area near Würenlos (AG).

In 1995 Ferrari was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Baden District Court for fivefold murder, including for the crime committed against Ruth Steinmann. 

Seven years later, research by journalist and book author Peter Holenstein discovered evidence that Ferrari could not be responsible for the murder of Ruth Steinmann. 

Among other things, a DNA analysis initiated by the journalist revealed that a pubic hair that could be secured on Ruth Steinmann’s corpse did not come from Ferrari.

On the basis of Holenstein’s research, the higher court of the canton of Aargau overturned the judgment against Ferrari in the Ruth Steinmann case in 2004 and referred it back to the Baden District Court for reassessment. 

As a result, a suspect on Ruth Steinmann was exhumed in March 1983 in Wolfhalden (AG) who had committed suicide. 

A dental report from the Scientific Service of the Zürich City Police showed that the bite marks on the girl’s body were definitely not from Ferrari, but from the man who died in 1983 and who looked very similar to Ferrari. 

In a national appeal, Werner Ferrari was found innocent on 10 April 2007 by the Baden District Court for the murder of Ruth Steinmann and acquitted of this crime. 

However, he remains detained for the other four cases.

As early as 1979, Holenstein succeeded in resolving a murder case in Italy with his research:

After he was able to convict the right perpetrator and he made a confession, the 46-year-old Swiss Werner Rudolf Meier was declared innocent in Elba Prison after 24 years served and was pardoned by Italy’s President Sandro Pertini. 

From Dominique Strebel and  Christoph Schilling, Beobachter, 28 December 2006

The fortnightly Swiss magazine Beobachter (The Observer) reveals grievances where state arbitrariness is worst: in educational, reformatory or penal institutions. 

Everywhere where the individual is exposed to state power without protection. 

And this is most glaringly shown in the case of errors of justice, to which the Beobachter repeatedly points out.

Take the case of the Zürich furniture maker Werner Rudolf Meier, who was imprisoned in Italy for 24 years – for a murder that he demonstrably did not commit. 

Only when the journalist Peter Holenstein researched meticulously did the matter move. 

Holenstein convicted the real murderer, who made a full confession. 

A revision procedure failed, because the court declared the confessing perpetrator to be insane. 

Holenstein continued to write about the case until Federal Councilors Willi Ritschard and Pierre Aubert spoke directly to the Italian President Sandro Pertini on behalf of Meier. 

He was finally released in 1979. 

“Without the Beobachter, this would not have been possible,” said Holenstein.

“It played a decisive role in putting pressure on us.” 

Meier was not acquitted, but pardoned. 

Therefore, he did not receive any compensation for unlawful detention. 

Even now, the Beobachter does not let Meier fall and “participates in the necessary health, professional and human integration efforts with advice and action”.

In 2001, Holenstein was awarded the German Regino Prize for the best judicial report of the year for Der Verdacht (The Suspicion), published in the magazine Tages-Anzeiger (Daily Indicator). 

Peter Holenstein was a member of the Swiss Working Group for Criminology (SAK) and the Swiss Criminological Society (SKG / SSDP). 

At the age of 72, he died in Zürich in January 2019 as a result of a heart attack.

• Pjotr ​​Kraska, actually Peter Johannes Kraska, also known as Kraska rex (1946 – 2016) was a Swiss action artist, writer, visual artist, critic of the authorities and a Zürich original.

In the late 60s he appeared, sometimes together with Dieter Meier, in experimental theatre and in avant-garde shows that startled the bourgeoisie at the time. 

His book, The Big Throw, reflects on speaking and writing. 

One poem (1978/79) was partly enthusiastically discussed. 

In 1980 he declared himself “King of Zürich and Bilbao, ruler of the Zen and A-centric empires” and from then on fought a bitter but unsuccessful dispute over free travel on the Zürich public transport network (ZVV).

Kraska, the son of East Prussian parents, grew up as the third of four children in Oberleimbach (Adliswil). 

After leaving school, he attended the Appenzell-Ausserrhoden (AR) cantonal school in Trogen, but took off before completion, deciding that he was an actor. 

He later lived in Zürich’s old town in Niederdorf. 

In 1966, Kraska began writing and performing experimental plays. 

He made his first public appearance on the occasion of the performance of Ladislav Kupkovic’s Písmená by the Zürich Chamber Choir in Fred Barth’s piece Forum Concert . 

Above: Slovak musician Ladislav Kupkovic (1936 – 2016)

In 1968 the 22-year-old Kraska founded the Wath-Tholl-Theater, where he performed the Darkroom play the same year:

“What can be admired in the non-stop, two and a half hour Darkroom piece is the concentration of the actors, the consistency with which the audience is alluded to that openly expressing incomprehension, and above all the virtuoso leadership of a – if one may say so – musical perceived arc to which the text is subordinated. 

Kraska’s problem is – and in this piece, in this nightmare, in any case in an annoying way, he chokes it out of himself – the lack of relationships, the groping in the pitch dark. 

Must this artistically inadequate examination of what may afflict a sensitive young man today take place in public and on a stage? “

Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 16 June 1968

In 1969 Kraska took part with the Wath-Tholl-Theater in the avant-garde show Underground Explosions, which was performed in Munich (München), Zürich and Cologne (Köln), among others, together with the rock groups Amon Düül and Guru Guru Groove, the Bavarians Paul and Limpe Fuchs (aka Anima) with experimental primal scream music, as well the Viennese performance artists Valie Export and Peter Weibel. 

The Zürich concept artist Dieter Meier and Munich film activist Karl Heinz organized the shows, which culminated in student revolts, pop revolts and avant-garde culture, which grew into tangible scandal. 

Der Spiegel (The Mirror) devoted a whole page to the occasion after the performance in the Munich Circus Krone (which claims to be the biggest circus in the world) and in the Zürich Volkshaus, led to panic and chaos. 

Der Spiegel wrote about Kraska:

The Wath Tholl theatre of Zürich actor Pjotr ​​Kraska (22):

The group of twelve, aged between 16 and 24, spent the winter at an Andalusian farm honing their style.

The Kraska clan entered the Krone Circus with animal screams, attacked each other in combat ballets and ecstatic Blocksberg hugs. 

Kraska, who uses his pants as a notepad, wants to achieve “unity between mind and body”.

When a spectator kissed a Kraska girl, she fell to the ground as if touched by lightning.

Der Spiegel, 21 April 1969

Even later, Kraska appeared as an action artist. 

For example, in 1982 he invited to a “simple monarchical-clerical celebration” on the Pestalozziwiese in Zürich , where Kristin T. Schnider was supposed to “let go“, as was announced – apparently with little public success:

“Now Kristin T. Schnider is no longer black-haired and no longer a poet, but rather bald and, as one hears, the first court poet to Kraska’s spiritual monarchy. 

And the actors pull away. 

The honoured audience sinks back into the grass and into boredom.“

Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 24 – 25 July 1982

From the 1970s, Kraska shifted increasingly to writing and worked as a publicist. 

In 1979 his first book, The Big Throw, was published. 

A poem was enthusiastically reviewed by some of the critics and reprinted in 2000:

“The Big Throw is a ‘narrative‘ (246 pages) about writing, about language itself, which is rare in the linguistic landscape of Switzerland and which has so far hardly been heard of reflexive density, biblical form of language and metalinguistic stubbornness.

Stubbornness repeatedly brought back the litter before it could still hit. 

Sounds fall silent in meaning, profundity evaporates in letters:

In every way language is driven out of language, but hollowness and fullness now fall back all the more into the words.

Here there is no commitment to this or that, here is total commitment to the language. 

There is an intelligent and at the same time eloquent talent at work.”

Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2 May 1978

Above: Kraska’s Der Grosse Wurf (The Big Throw)

In 1981 the novella Death in Naples was followed in 1982 by the novel The Hand in the Clong, and Buddha smiles forever. 

Kraska also published several articles in the Neue Zürcher Zeitiung on bullfighting and flamenco. 

He had an ambivalent relationship with the Kunsthaus Zürich. 

For the exhibition Dada Global (1994) he was allowed to design a showcase as a “contemporary representative of Dadaism.” 

In 2013 the Kunsthaus acquired two Swiss banknotes painted by Kraska, and the museum library owns a complete collection of Court News. 

Conversely, the latter refused to include the “royal coat of arms” designed by Peter Fischli in the Fischli / Weiss retrospective, whereupon Kraska burned it in a public staging in front of the Kunsthaus. 

Most recently, Kraska bequeathed his urn with the ashes to the Kunsthaus – a gift that was not accepted.

During the Zürich youth riots of 1980, Kraska declared himself “His Majesty King Kraska of Zurich and Bilbao, ruler of the Central and A-Central Empire“. 

During this time, he published the Crown’s Official Court News every nine months. 

In this glossy magazine he printed, among other things, excerpts from his numerous disputes in court, wrote instructions for the production of blank stamp cards, glorified the Spanish bullfight and rounded off everything with numerous photographs of himself and his followers. 

In 2015 he laid down the “crown”.

In the 80s and 90s he quarreled with the Zürich transport company (ZVV) and the responsible city councilor, Jürg Kaufmann:

The “King” took the right to travel without a ticket and declared himself a “green driver” (“in the service of the environment”) and fought a bitter dispute through all court instances until the Federal Court upheld a sentence of 30 days in prison in 1987.

In another trial, the Zürich District Council sentenced Kraska to three months’ imprisonment for “continued fraudulent activity“.

Kraska unsuccessfully sued the Zürich city councilman Jürg Kaufmann for “insulting”, as he had described him in the magazine Bonus 24 as a “total weirdo”. 

Kraska’s defense attorney was temporarily the politically committed lawyer Barbara Hug, who had also represented the “escape king” Walter Stürm , the “sprayer of Zürich” Harald Naegeli and the alleged terrorist Giorgio Bellini in court. 

As the quotations interspersed here show, Kraska’s work was controversial. 

In a résumé, the Tages Anzeiger wrote:

“In fact, King Kraska, together with Dieter Meier and other Dadaists, took up what had moved the 1960s: the liberation from authority and bourgeois morals. 

Today, the 67-year-old’s art and subjects are outdated. 

The civil fright has degenerated into a civil servant fright.“

Tages-Anzeiger, 26 June 2014

His work as an artist faded increasingly into the background in the public perception, and from the 1980s his persistent fight for free use of public transport was at the center (“Schwarzfahrer-König“), which occupied all court instances. 

For the Beobachter, Kraska was therefore “a prominent example of the type of the modern resister“. 

In the obituaries published in 2016, Kraska was drawn primarily as a city original.

• Kamil Krejčí is a Czech-Swiss actor, director and author who has lived in Switzerland since 1968.

Kamil Krejčí attended the Zürich Acting Academy, where he trained as an actor and director. 

Since 1987 he has been active on the stage and in film. 

After a permanent engagement at the Stadttheater St. Gallen and the Stadt Bühnen Münster, he was a freelance actor and director. 

Krejčí worked on many stages in Switzerland and Germany, for example, the B. Fritz Rémond Theater, comedy in the Bayerischer Hof (Bavarian Court), Stadttheater Bern, Luzern and Solothurn. 

He also played Erwin Imhof in Mannezimmer (Swiss television) in 65 episodes.

He was the founder of various theater companies, such as BIM Stage, Artsi Fartsi or Take Theater.

Kamil Krejčí was responsible for the text editing of Der kleine Horrorladen (Little Shop of Horrors), as well as the Swiss-German version of the musical Elternabend (Parents’ Night) for the Theater am Hechtplatz or s’Dschungelbuech (The Jungle Book) for the Bernhardtheater. 

The family musicals Der Zauberlehrling (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice), De chli Isbär (The Little Polar Bear), s’Dschungelbuech (The Jungle Book) and D’Schatzinsle (Treasure Island) toured Switzerland for several years. 

Krejci wrote the scripts for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, The Little Polar Bear and Treasure Island.

For Dschungelbuch he was responsible for the direction and the text version.

Kamil Krejčí is the “inventor” of the “Adliswil Christmas Calendar”. 

From 2001 to 2018 he organized and hosted his living Christmas calendar in Adliswil. 

Together with Brigitte Schmidlin and Beat Gärtner (Stadt Theater) he told his own and adapted Christmas stories every day of Advent. 

Krejci now has a “story pool” of more than 200 Christmas fairy tales written in Swiss German.

From 2005 he wrote columns for the Zürcher Tages Anzeiger, then until 2016 in the newspaper “Züri 2”. 

In addition, a number of radio plays were created both under his direction and under his pen, for example, various Schreckmümpfeli (horror stories), but also several CDs with Papa Moll stories produced by SRF. 

In many other radio plays he acts as a speaker.

• Felix Mettler (1945 – 2019) was a Swiss writer.

Mettler studied veterinary medicine and worked for several years as a senior assistant at the Institute for Veterinary Pathology at the University of Zürich. 

His first work, The Wild Boar, was translated into English and Italian. 

The novel also served as the basis for the film Death of a Boar (2006) with Joachim Król. 

The 73-metre high transmission tower Felsenegg – Girstel transmission tower of Swisscom is visible from afar and is around 300 metres from the mountain station of the Felseneggbahn cable car. 

The tower was built in 1959 to broadcast radio and television programs in the region. 

With the completion of the directional tower in 1963, radio and television broadcasting began in Switzerland.

 

The Felsenegg station was the most important national technical center for television broadcasting. 

It was the control centre for many private Swiss television stations and allowed national and international distribution.

Above: Felsenegg transmission tower, 1963

 

With the introduction of the REAL system, several transmission systems were distributed to 27 other Swisscom towers. 

As a result, the tower lost its originally outstanding central importance. 

The Felsenegg transmission tower is now integrated in the general network of transmission towers. 

Since fiber optics became popular, conventional broadcasting of radio programs has also declined. 

The tower shone until 10 December 200 as VHF radio from Radio Zürisee before it was switched to the Üetliberg.  

In 2020 the Felsenegg Tower was released from the canton’s inventory of historical monuments. 

In 2021 the dilapidated Felsenegg tower will be replaced by a 73-meter high lattice mast tower. 

The old concrete tower is to be dismantled by the end of 2022.

Skyguide – the air traffic control company that monitors Swiss airspace and adjacent airspace – has been operating a radio receiving station there since 2005.

The directional beam tower was built by Zürich architect Edwin Schoch. 

It is 51 meters high and was made of reinforced concrete and clad with aluminum. 

This cladding not only has significant technical advantages, but also has a special play of light that adapts the tower’s color to the changing moods of the day and the weather.

By choosing a consistently slim tower shape, it was possible to avoid a forest fall on the narrow ridge of the Felsenegg. 

A triangular floor plan with cut corners makes the tower light and at the same time allows the large antennas mounted on special platforms outside the tower to be placed in the desired main beam directions without difficulty. 

At the top there is a 22-meter high dipole antenna made of steel. 

The tower has 16 floors and one underground floor in which the operating rooms are located. 

The antennas are mounted on the top five platforms and the roof. 

This includes parabolic and directional antennas. 

The maximum radiated power to the Nods Chasseral transmitter 111.3 kilometers away, as the crow flies, is 10 watts.

The Türlersee (Türler Lake) is located in the Säuliamt in the canton of Zürich, on the border of the communities Aeugst and Hausen am Albis at 643 metres above sea level.

The Türlersee lies for the most part in the municipality of Aeugst. 

The lake is around 1.4 kilometers long and around 500 meters wide. 

On the southeastern bank there is a campsite and the Türlen Lido. 

Türlen is a hamlet that belongs to the municipality of Hausen am Albis and is located on the Türlersee, west of the Albis in the canton of Zürich.

Türlen has a bus stop where regional buses run to and from Wiedikon, Hausen am Albis, Ebertswil and Affoltern am Albis, a restaurant and the outdoor pool on the Türlersee. 

The only campsite on the Türlersee is near Türlen, where on 26 May 2009, 17 caravans burned out due to a gas explosion and fire.

Sixteen people were injured.

In the north the River Reppisch leaves the lake.

A landslide on the Aeugsterberg changed the landscape at the end of the last ice age around 10,000 years ago. 

The Aeugsterberg, made up of molasse (sedimentary rock), rose like an island out of the ice masses formed by the Reuss and Linth glaciers. 

After the glacier melted, the pressure on the mountain flank eased, and at the same time the meltwater streams increased the erosion at the foot of the mountain. 

The slope lost its stability and 60 million cubic meters of rock slid into the valley and dammed the Reppisch to the Türlersee. 

First the Türlersee flowed over the Hexengraben (witches’ pit) towards the Reuss, only later over the Reppisch into the Limmat.

With a path around the lake and through the surrounding forests, the lake is a popular local recreation area. 

A lido, as well as other beaches and jetties, offers bathing opportunities. 

First and foremost, the landscape at the Türlersee is a diverse nature and landscape protection area with natural banks, species-rich flat and sloping moors and dry meadows. 

The lake is of cantonal importance as a spawning area for common frogs and toads.

In 1786 a coal seam was discovered north of the Aeugsterberg near Gottert, which led to the construction of the Riedhof Mine, in which coal was mined during the periods of 1786–1814, 1917–1921 and 1942–1947.

In 1944 the first ordinance for the protection of the Türlersee was issued, which was adjusted due to the steadily increasing influx of visitors in 1998 and 2001 (Protection Ordinance of December 17, 2001). 

For this reason, intensive recreational use is only possible in the demarcated areas:

In the area of ​​the campsite, near the cantonal road at the northern end of the Lake and at the Hexengraben.

Above: Türlersee

 

The Türlersee was frozen over in January 2009 and January 2012, with an accessible layer of ice.

Because of its sheltered location between Albis and Aeugsterberg, the water of the Türlersee is hardly circulated. 

Therefore, the water circulation in winter is supported by a circulation system.

The Türlersee is easy to reach by public transport:

From the city of Zürich, take tram 14 to Triemli and Postbus 235 or take the S5 Zürich S-Bahn to Affoltern am Albis, then Bus 223 via Hausen am Albis to Türlersee. 

The Türlersee is on the regional cycling route 51 Säuliamt – Schwyz – Zurich – Schwyz. 

There is a legend about the origin of the water:

Where the Türlersee now spreads, there used to be a beautiful farm with fertile fields. 

The owner had an only child, a graceful, dear daughter. 

She caught the eye of the young lord of Schnabel Castle, and he pursued her passionately. 

But the honorable child persistently refused all his promises.

Then the lord of the castle persuaded the father to bring the girl to the Castle at midnight under all sorts of pretenses. 

He opened the gate himself and pulled the reluctant daughter in. 

As he was about to close the gate, she noticed what was being played and uttered a cry of curse on her traitorous father. 

At that moment lightning flashed from the sky and struck her parents’ house. 

She saw how a fiery chasm opened and the neat and once so blessed courtyard with all its fields disappeared into it. 

In the morning, however, there was a lake in its place.

The Affoltern district is a district in the southwest of Canton Zürich. 

It lies between the Albis chain and the Reuss with borders in the west and northwest with Canton Aargau, in the south with Canton Zug.

The district is identical to the Knonaueramt region (or Knonauer Amt) and is popularly called Säuliamt . 

The name Zürcher Freiamt , which was also used in earlier centuries, is virtually unknown today.

From the beginning of the 15th century until the Reformation, the city of Zürich gradually gained control over the areas between Albis and Reuss. 

Already in 1406 the heirs of John of Hallwyl sold Langnau, Kappel, Rifferswil, Maschwanden, Ottenbach, and portions of today’s Obfeldens to Switzerland’s largest city. 

In the course of the Swiss conquest of Aargau in 1415, Zürich then annexed the Freiamt Affoltern and jurisdiction over Steinhausen, the Maschwanderamt and the Kelleramt. 

During the Old Zürich War (1440 – 1446), the entire region was severely affected by acts of war and was administered by Schwyz, Glarus, Lucerne and Zug between 1443 and 1450. 

One of the traditional autonomy rights of the Freiamt was its own jurisdiction. 

The courts handed down from the Habsburg era (1173 – 1415) were Rifferswil, Affoltern am Albis and Berikon. 

The Freiamtsgemeinde met in the Mettmenstein church. 

It met for the last time on 26 March 1795, but had to be moved to Rüteli near today’s train station because the church was too small for the large number of visitors. 

From 1507 to 1512, the Zürich government combined the abovementioned areas to form the Knonau bailiff and standardized the legal system. 

The centralization efforts of the city of Zürich’s guild regime provoked the resistance of the Ämtler population, for example in the Waldmann trade in 1489, in the Wädenswil uprising in 1646 (a tax revolt in Wädenswil and in the Knonaueramt, which Zürich condemned with military actions, executions and heavy fines), in Ämtlerhandel (1794 – 1795), and in the Bock War (1804). 

This last uprising ended the Knonaueramt with the disarmament and military occupation of the villages, imprisonment and fines as well as the execution under martial law of two revolutionaries, Jakob Schneebeli from Affltern am Albis and Heinrich Häberling from Knonau.

Their names (together with those of the also executed Hans Jakob Willi from Horgen and Jakob Kleinert from Schönenberg) are immortalized on a memorial stone at Affoltern train station.

Hans Jakob Willi was born in Horgen as the son of the shoemaker Johann Jakob Willi and his wife Anna Maria Leuthold.

After completing his apprenticeship as a shoemaker in his father’s workshop, Willi started working as a mercenary in Spain and France at the age of 15. 

After escaping from British captivity, he returned to Horgen in 1801. 

On 28 March 1803 he married Anna Anton von Horgen.

The Mediation Constitution of 1803 shifted the balance of power in favor of the city of Zürich. 

Willi, with his war experience, became the leader of the rebels in the countryside. 

The battles were named Bockenkrieg (Bock War) after the Bocken inn in Arn bei Horgen. 

Three warships were used to bombard Horgen from Lake Zürich. 

The insurgents won the battle, but Willi had to retire injured. 

The uprising now collapsed very quickly.

After the battle at the Bocken, Hans Jakob Willi stayed in hiding until he was caught in Stäfa after seven days. 

An unconstitutional court martial condemned him despite the intervention of Napoleon Bonaparte. 

On 25 April 1804 at 2 p.m. Willi was executed in Zürich along with two co-defendants.

“We are free Swiss, citizens with equal rights throughout. 

If our government does not want to hear the voice of the people, it is tyrannical.“

Hans Jakob Willi

In 1798 the authorities of the Helvetic Republic created the district of Mettmenstetten, which included the core area of ​​the Landvogtei Knonau, as well as Aesch, Birmensdorf, Oberurdorf, Wettswil, Stallikon and Bonstetten. 

Langnau was assigned to the Hirgen district on this occasion. 

Steinhausen came to Canton Zug and Canton Baden, which in turn became part of the new Aaargau in 1803. 

In its current boundaries, the district emerged as the Knonau Oberamt after the end of the Mediation Constitution in 1814. 

The district capital was relocated in 1837 from the former bailiff’s seat of Knonau to the more centrally located Affoltern am Albis. 

This gave the district its current name.

After the turmoil and crises of the beginning of the century, a strong industrialization set in around the middle of the 19th century, which also found its expression in transport technology with the opening of the Zürich – Zug railway in 1864. 

The opening of National Highway 4 in 2009 marked another important turning point, as Affoltern am Albis could now be reached from Zürich and Zug in less than 15 minutes. 

In the 1980s a regional protest movement postponed the construction of the motorway for more than twenty years with growth-critical and ecological arguments, but ultimately could not stop the suburbanization of large parts of the district.

In 2012 almost 50,000 people lived in the Affoltern district and there were 16,000 jobs. 

In the last ten years, the district has recorded a population growth of 16.1% (compared to 14%, the cantonal average). 

Hausen am Albis is located in the south of the canton of Zürich in the Affoltern district, on the south side of the Albis. 

The community, located in the upper Jonental Valley, consists of the villages of Hausen am Albis and Ebertswil and the hamlets of Türlen, Vollenweid, Tüfenbach, Hinter-, Mittel- and Oberalbis, Husertal, Hirzwangen and Schweikhof. 

The municipality extends from Sihlbrugg to the Türlersee. 

This makes Hausen am Albis the largest municipality in the district with a total of 13.64 km². 

The highest point in the municipality is 916 metres above sea level. 

Bürglen is the lowest point at 532 metres above sea level. 

Hausen am Albis is located between the cities of Zürich and Zug.

Hausen am Albis was first mentioned in a document in 869 as Huson, today’s district of Heisch in 1184 as Heinsche. 

During this time the lords of Hausen were the Barons of Eschenbach. 

It was they who built the Schnabelburg on the Albis ridge in 1150 and founded the Cistercian Abbey of Kappel in 1185 . 

The Schnabelburg is the ruin of a hilltop castle on the beak-like elevation north of the Schnabellücke near the village of Hausen am Albis.

In 1185 Walter I, Baron von Eschenbach, named himself after the newly built castle. 

However, it is not known for sure whether it was really the same castle, the ruin of which is known today. 

Archaeological investigations of the castle complex have shown that the castle was probably built in the 13th century, and that it was built very hastily. 

However, no traces have been found in the vicinity of the ruins that are visible today, which would suggest that another castle was built first.

In 1218 the last Duke of the Zähringen family, with whom the castle owners were connected, died, and the economic decline of the family of the Lords of Eschenbach-Schnabelburg began with Berchtold II.

Above: Zähringen coat of arms, New City Hall, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

In 1270 von Eschenbach became a friend of Rudolf I von Habsburg, the new lord of the castle of Schnabelburg. 

Berchtold II fought with the Habsburg in the decisive battle – one of the largest knight battles in Europe – on the Marchfeld (26 August) against Ottokar von Böhmen in 1278. 

It can be assumed that the Eschenbach knight fell in the decisive battle near Göllheim in 1298, as he disappeared from documents at that time.

A son of Berchtold, Walter von Eschenbach, helped murder King Albrecht I of Habsburg in 1308. 

After that, he was given the imperial ban. 

In August 1309, the Habsburgs then besieged and conquered the Schnabelburg in revenge for the regicide. 

According to archaeological findings, the castle was either not destroyed during the siege or was later rebuilt.

In 1955, Hugo Schneider carried out excavation work and conservation measures at the ruins.

In 1309 Eschenbach rule was ended by the destruction of the Schnabelburg, because Walther von Eschenbach was involved in the murder of King Albrecht. 

Albrecht I was the first legitimate son of the Roman – German King Rudolf I of Habsburg, born in wedlock, from his first marriage to Gertrud Anna von Hohenberg (died 1281). 

His older half-brother Albrecht von Schenkenberg, who received the Grafschaft Löwenstein from his father, was born out of wedlock. 

His motto were “Fugam victoria nescit” (“The victory knows no flight.”) and “Quod optimum idem jucundissimum” (“The best is the most pleasant.”)

From 1273 he officiated as Landgrave in the Landgraviate of Upper Alsace. 

After the 1278 victory in the Battle of Marchfeld over King Ottokar Premysl of Bohemia, he was appointed by his father in May 1281, when he left the conquered Vienna again, as imperial administrator over the imperial fiefs of the Duchy of Austria and the Duchy of Styria. 

The office had been vacant in the turmoil of the Austrian Interregnum since June 1278 because the Wittelsbach Heinrich XIII, had defected from Bavaria to the enemy.

On 17 December 1282, at the Reichstag of Augsburg, he was appointed Duke of Austria and Styria together with his brother Rudolf.

One year later on 1 June 1283 in the Treaty of Rheinfelden, he ruled alone in these rights. 

Rudolf was to be compensated for this with other territories in southwest Germany, but this did not happen until his death in 1290. 

Albrecht quickly made himself unpopular with his policy of pushing back the natives through his Swabian clientele, especially the Lords of Walsee. 

In 1291 – 1292, the Landsberger Bund revolted in Styria, against whom Albrecht was able to quickly assert himself. 

In 1295 the Austrian nobility rose up as well. 

In Vienna, too, Ottokar Přemysl remained much more popular for a long time – not least because of economic relations with the Bohemian region. 

After all, Vienna got a new city charter in 1296.

Rudolf I tried to make Albrecht co-king during his own lifetime in order to make the royal dignity in the House of Habsburg hereditary. 

However, the Electors, especially the Count Palatine (officials and representatives of the King or Emperor) and the clerical Electors, did not allow this to happen. 

An elector was one of the originally seven, later nine and finally ten highest-ranking princes of the Holy Roman Empire (modern Germany), who had had the sole right to elect the Roman (German) King since the 13th century. 

This royal title was traditionally associated with the right to be crowned Emperor by the Pope.

In 1290 Rudolf wanted to put his son on the throne of Hungary, which after the assassination of Ladislaus IV was regarded as a reverted fiefdom, but his death in 1291 thwarted this plan.

As Rudolf’s successor, Adolf von Nassau was elected the new Roman (German) king in 1292. 

In the following years Albrecht hardly intervened in imperial politics, as he was bound by revolts by various nobles in his Austrian lands. 

In 1295 he was seriously poisoned, the reason for which remained unclear. 

Maybe the kitchen had processed slightly spoiled food or an assassin had mixed poison in the food. 

In any case, Albrecht collapsed from convulsions. 

His doctors gave him laxatives. 

After the colic, when he got angry, he lost consciousness and, faced with the fear of death, was hung upside down on both legs so that the poison could flow out of his body. 

The patient survived this procedure, but one eye was destroyed.

When Adolf was deposed again in 1298, Albrecht was elected as his successor as King on 23 June 1298. 

In the Knight’s Battle of Göllheim (Battle of the Hasenbühel) on 2 July 1298, Adolf fell while fighting the Habsburgs. 

On 27 July, Albrecht was elected a second time and then crowned King in Aachen on 24 August 1298. 

On his first court day in Nuremberg in the same year he enfeoffed (gave) his sons – Rudolf, Fredrich the Beautiful and Leopold the Glorious – Austria and Styria. 

Through a marriage connection with France, Albrecht I achieved peace with Philip IV the Fair, with whom he had previously been in dispute over the course of the border. 

Albrecht also reached an agreement with Wenceslaus II (Vaclav) of Bohemia in the dispute over rule over Poland:

The Bohemian king added the most important parts of the recently re-established kingdom to a new collapse into his territory, but recognized Albrecht’s suzerainty onwards. 

Opponents of Habsburg power, however, remained the Rhenish Electors, including Pope Boniface VIII.

The papal approbation was only obtained in 1303 in return for far-reaching concessions which severely restricted the King’s power, especially in Italy, and which could have been understood as an oath of subjection towards the papacy. 

However, Albrecht refused the coronation offered by Boniface. 

In 1304 Albrecht and his son Rudolf moved together against Wenceslaus II, who, after the death of Andreas III the Venetian, his son Wenceslaus III became the Hungarian king. 

Since the Pope would have liked to see another Italian on the Hungarian throne in the form of the Neapolitan Prince Karl Robert, he asked Albrecht for help. 

Albrecht made the strangest demands on Wenceslaus II. 

When this did not fulfill them, the imperial ban was imposed on him. 

Wenceslaus then transferred the Hungarian crown jewels from Ofen to Prague. 

On the following campaign Albrecht and Rudolf Kuttenberg besieged Kutná Hora, the silver mine in Bohemia. 

Their Cuman auxiliaries committed terrible atrocities in the country. 

At the beginning of winter, hunger broke out in their army and they withdrew.

A political unification of Central Europe under the leadership of the Habsburgs seemed within reach. 

Albrecht succeeded after the death of the childless King Wenceslaus III on 4 August 1306, who himself became king in Bohemia after the death of his father in 1305, installed his son Rudolf as King of Bohemia. 

But then the Bohemian estates rebelled and decided to depose the king. 

Albrecht quickly forced them to recognize his sovereignty.

However, 1307 brought a serious setback for the Habsburg hegemonic plans. 

After Rudolf’s early death, Heinrich von Carinthia from Meinhardingen became the new King of Bohemia. 

In connection with a controversial reverted fiefdom in Thuringia and Meißen, Albrecht also lost the Battle of Lucka against the sons of Albrecht the Degenerate from the House of Wettin. 

When King Albrecht invaded with a large army, the Margraves Dietrich IV of Lausitz and Friedrich I of Meißen fought him, at the head of armed citizens and peasants as well as Braunschweig cavalry bands, Albrecht suffered a complete defeat on 31 May 1307.

In the dispute over the customs posts of German princes, Albrecht soon cracked down on them until the archbishops and Rudolf, the Count Palatine near the Rhine, surrendered. 

However, Pope Boniface stood in the way of breaking up the Kurkollegium. 

Unrest in Swabia, Baden, Alsace and Switzerland also increased again during this period. 

Peace remained elusive.

Albrecht was murdered in 1308 near Windisch, now in Switzerland, not far from his ancestral castle. 

The murderers were his nephew Johann von Schwaben – who was nicknamed Parricida (relative murderer) because of his deed – Baron Rudolf von Wart (1274 – 1309), Baron Rudolf von Balm, Baron Walter von Eschenbach and Baron Konrad von Tegerfelden. 

The exact course of the murder is presented differently by the chroniclers. 

Albrecht was probably on the way from Baden to his wife in Rheinfelden. 

In the morning, Duke Johann had claimed his inheritance at Stein Castle – as he had often done before – which led to a scandal. 

According to the chronicler Matthias von Neuenburg (1295 – 1364) the first sword cut that pierced Albrecht’s neck was received from his nephew Johann, then Rudolf von Wart pierced him with his sword, while Rudolf von Balm split the King’s skull in two. 

Johann was the son of Albrecht’s early deceased brother Rudolf II, who had renounced the regency in Austria in the Treaty of Rheinfelden and had become Duke of Swabia, Alsace and Aargau. 

According to Chronicle reports, the failure to pay Johann in compensation was the main motive. 

Depending on the sources, Johann’s blood lust is also given as the motive for murder.

The successor as Duke was Albrecht’s son Friedrich the Fair, but he did not succeed as King. 

The royal dignity went to the House of Luxembourg with Henrich VII (1278 – 1313), where it remained until 1437 – interrupted by the governments of Ludwig of Bavaria (1282 – 1347) and Ruprecht of the Palatinate.

King Albrecht was first buried in the Wettingen monastery (in today’s Switzerland). 

In 1309, at the instigation of Henrich VII, his body was transferred to Speyer, where he was buried side by side with his former rival Adolf von Nassau in the Speyer Cathedral.

As a result of Eschenbach’s treachery Hausen am Albis was subordinated to the Hallwylers, who ceded it to the city of Zürich in 1406.

It is said that the storyline of The Game of Thrones franchise was inspired by England’s Wars of the Roses, but I submit that the story of Albrecht I and his assassination is also worthy of dramatic accounts.

Kappel am Albis is first mentioned in 1185 as de Capella.

The settlement was founded in 1185 as a Cistercian monastery which today houses a seminar centre, hotel, cafe and a restaurant.

It was the location of the Wars of Kappel in 1529 and 1531, during the turmoil that accompanied the Reformation of Huldrych Zwingli.

A monument to Zwingli is located nearby at the hamlet of Näfenhäuser, marking the spot where he met his fatal end.

In 1185 the Monastery was founded by the Barons of Eschenbach – Scnabelburg and confirmed by the Bishop of Konstanz Hermann II. 

A chapel was available to the first abbot Wilhelm and his monks to build a Cistercian monastery. 

The mother monastery of Kappel was Altenryf (Hauterive) Abbey (Freiburg Canton). 

Through Pope Innocent III, the monastery received the Privilegium commune Cisterciense and it was placed under the protection of the Papacy in 1211.

Until the end of the 14th century, the Monastery received donations from the founding family and other noble families, especially in the Knouauer Amt, in Zugerland (today’s Aargau), in Luzern Canton, on Lake Zürich (Zürichsee) and in the Zürich Lowlands (Zürich Unterland). 

There were also isolated lands in central Switzerland. 

The Monastery got into financial difficulties through the social development, especially the emerging money economy, the upswing of the cities and through the competition of the mendicant orders. 

In addition, the Monastery came more and more under the influence of secular lords, especially after the assassination of King Albrecht in 1308.

In 1344 the Monastery concluded a permanent alliance with the city of Zug in 1344 and a similar one with Zürich in 1403.

Through these alliances, the Monastery got between the fronts in the Old Zürich War (1440 – 1446) and was plundered by the Confederates in 1443. 

On 15 January 1493, a fire devastated the convent building, which the then Abbot Ulrich had rebuilt. 

Due to his dissolute lifestyle, Abbot Ulrich was forced to resign in 1508.

Above: Kappel Monastery

A new spirit arrived under Abbot Ulrich’s successor, Wolfgang Joner. 

In 1523 he summoned Heinrich Bullinger, who was only nineteen, to Kappel, where he taught the monks and young men from the area as a private tutor. 

Through Bullinger, the teachings of the Reformation found their way to Kappel, and so pictures (icons) were removed from the Monastery Church on 9 March 1525. 

Holy Mass was abolished on 4 September of the same year. 

A year later, on 29 March 1526, the monks celebrated the Lord’s Supper for the first time according to the Reformed order and took off their robes. 

Many left the Monastery and turned to a trade or became preachers. 

The convent finally handed the Monastery over to the city of Zürich in 1527. 

Wolfgang Joner, Heinrich Bullinger and four other men stayed in Kappel and continued to run the school as a boarding school for boys. 

The previous monastery church became the parish church of Kappel. 

During the First Kappel War in 1529, Kappel became the scene of the June deployment of the Reformed and Catholic troops, which came to a peaceful end with the legendary Kappel milk soup.

At the end of June 1529, the Zürich troops marched against the central Swiss cantons. 

In this First Kappel War, thanks to the mediation of the neutral towns, a fratricidal war among the Confederates was prevented.

According to the reports, the common footmen of the two armies used the time while the leaders were negotiating to fraternize and put a large saucepan on a fire near Kappel am Albis, exactly on the border between the two cantons. 

The people of Zug are said to have contributed the milk and the people of Zurich the bread for a milk soup, which was then eaten by both armies together.

Today the “Milchsuppenstein” (milk soup stone) is located on a hill southwest of Ebertswil.

The large pot from which everyone ate together was of great symbolic value for the later historiography and identification of Switzerland.

In memory of this event, Kappeler milk soup is still served today when a dispute can be settled through negotiation, for example by Federal Councilor Pascal Couchpin at the conclusion of the St. Gallen cultural property dispute in 2006. 

It was entirely different on 11 October 1531, when the Zurich reformer Zwingli was killed in the second battle near Kappel.

After the Reformation, the Monastery remained Zürich’s domain. 

From 1834 the buildings were used for social purposes, and since 1983 by the Zürcher Landeskirche (Zürich Canton Church) as a seminar hotel and educational center called the House of Silence and Encounter. 

Since 2008 it has been called Kloster Kappel again. 

The Monastery has been renovated since 2009. 

The Monastery Church shows a glass painting work by the Swiss graphic artist and painter Max Hunziker in the choir .

The Kappel Monastery Association (formerly the Kappelerhof Association) is the owner of the Kappel Monastery domain (real estate, land, forest). 

The 14 association members are the 13 parishes of the Affoltern district and the Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Zürich. 

The church and rectory belong to the Canton of Zürich.

As personalities go, Zwingli is not the sole person to get recognized when one speaks of Kappel am Albis.

Josias Simler (1530 – 1576), Swiss Reformed theologian and historian, known among other things for his works on Swiss regional studies and history, was born in Kappel am Albis.

In 1544 Josias Simler went to Zürich to study under his godfather and sponsor Heinrich Bullinger. 

In 1546 he continued his studies in theology, languages ​​and natural sciences in Basel, and from 1547 to 1549 in arithmetic and geometry in Strasbourg. 

He then completed his theology studies in Zürich, worked as a pastor and occasionally as a mathematics teacher for Swiss physician/polymath/encyclopedist Conrad Gessner (1516 – 1565). 

In 1552 he became professor at the Carolinum for instruction in the New Testament in Zürich and in 1560 for theology. 

In that year he temporarily took over the chair of the dismissed Theodor Bibliander (1505 – 1564), who represented the views of Erasmus of Rotterdam and not those of the Reformed Church.

From 1555 he began to re-publish Conrad Gessner’s Bibliotheca universalis. 

In his work De Alpibus Commentarius (Commentary of the Alps)(1574), the first work that dealt extensively with the Alps, he collected all information about the mountains from the works of various other authors with comments from his own experience. 

In the process, he developed new insights into the nature of avalanches, the difference between firn and ice, the low temperature at high altitudes and the plant endism in the Alps, in this the oldest description of the Alps in Latin.

In his childhood and youth in Kappel am Albis, Simler had the panorama of the Glarus, Uri and Bernese Alps on his doorstep. 

Later he was unable to travel because of his gout. 

He had to draw his information from literary sources.

The “Commentary of the Alps” is a first attempt to give an overview of the natural and cultural history of the Alps and their individual mountain ranges. 

It is a collection of experiences from Swiss scientists that they personally gained in the Alps. 

An abundance of quotes from the classical tradition underlines the humanistic orientation of the text.

Simler also wrote other works on Swiss cultural studies, such as De Republica Helvetiorum (1548) (abstract of the Chronicle by Johannes Stumpf: 1500 – 1578) or Vallesiae Descriptio. 

He also advised Ulrich Campell (1510 – 1582) in formulating his Raetiae alpestris descriptio Topographica (Topographical Description of Alpine Raetia) (1573). 

The Simler Snowfield in Antarctica is named in his honour. 

I tour the Monastery of Kappel am Albis, sit in its cafeteria and dine on soup and salad and cola, and I make notes as I try to assess my feelings at this, the final end of this unreligious pilgrim’s progress.

I have followed the life of one man, from his birthplace to the spot where he fell, and now I feel I must take stock of this man and decide for myself what is my opinion of this man who has garnered so much respect for his role in the Reformation in Switzerland.

I cannot claim to be wise in the understanding of Christianity, for it seems to be too often that they who profess to be Christian fail too often to act in a manner which Christ would have.

In fairness, I suspect that there are Buddhists who do not live in the way Buddha intended or Muslims who do not practice the teachings of Muhammad.

Religious affiliation checked on a census poll does not mean religious practice.

If that were so then Trump would not have been the candidate of choice for American evangelical Christians.

Trump went to Sunday school and was confirmed in 1959 at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, New York City.

In the 1970s, his parents joined the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan.

In 2015, the Church stated Trump “is not an active member“.

In 2019, he appointed his personal pastor, televangelist Paula White, to the White House Office of Public Liaison.

In 2020, he said he identified as a non-denominational Christian.

On 1 June 2020, federal law enforcement officials used batons, rubber bullets, pepper spray projectiles, stun grenades, and smoke to remove a largely peaceful crowd of protesters from Lafayette Square, outside the White House.

Trump then walked to St. John’s Episcopal Church, where protesters had set a small fire the night before.

He posed for photographs holding a Bible upside down, with senior administration officials later joining him in photos.

Trump said on 3 June that the protesters were cleared because “they tried to burn down the church on 31 May and almost succeeded“, describing the Church as “badly hurt“.

Religious leaders condemned the treatment of protesters and the photo opportunity itself.

Many retired military leaders and defense officials condemned Trump’s proposal to use the US military against anti-police brutality protesters.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark A. Milley, later apologized for accompanying Trump on the walk and thereby “creating the perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”

As a candidate and as President, Trump frequently made false statements in public speeches and remarks to an extent unprecedented in American politics.

His falsehoods became a distinctive part of his political identity.

Trump’s false and misleading statements were documented by fact checkers, including at the Washington Post, which tallied a total of 30,573 false or misleading statements made by Trump over his four-year term.

Trump’s falsehoods increased in frequency over time, rising from about 6 false or misleading claims per day in his first year as president to 16 per day in his second year to 22 per day in his third year to 39 per day in his final year.

He reached 10,000 false or misleading claims 27 months into his term, 20,000 false or misleading claims 14 months later, and 30,000 false or misleading claims five months later.

Many of Trump’s comments and actions have been considered racist.

He has repeatedly denied this, asserting:

“I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world.“

In national polling, about half of respondents say that Trump is racist.

A greater proportion believe that he has emboldened racists.

Several studies and surveys have found that racist attitudes fueled Trump’s political ascent and have been more important than economic factors in determining the allegiance of Trump voters. 

Racist and Islamophobic attitudes are a strong indicator of support for Trump.

Trump’s comment on the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — that there were “very fine people on both sides” — was widely criticized as implying a moral equivalence between the white supremacist demonstrators and the counter-protesters at the rally.

In a January 2018 Oval Office meeting to discuss immigration legislation, Trump reportedly referred to El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, and African nations as “shithole countries“.

His remarks were condemned as racist.

In July 2019, Trump tweeted that four Democratic congresswomen — all minorities, three of whom are native-born Americans — should “go back” to the countries they “came from“.

He was referring to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

This group is known collectively as “the Squad“.

“So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful nation on Earth, how our government is to be run.

Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came?

Then come back and show us how it is done.

These places need your help badly.

You can’t leave fast enough.

I’m sure that (Speaker of the House) Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump on Twitter, 14 July 2019)

Two days later the House of Representatives voted 240–187, mostly along party lines, to condemn his “racist comments“.

White nationalist publications and social media sites praised his remarks, which continued over the following days.

Trump continued to make similar remarks during his 2020 campaign.

Trump has a history of insulting and belittling women when speaking to media and on social media.

He made lewd comments, demeaned women’s looks, and called them names like ‘dog‘, ‘crazed‘, ‘crying lowlife‘, ‘face of a pig‘, or ‘horseface‘.

In October 2016, two days before the second presidential debate, a 2005 “hot mike” Access Hollywood recording surfaced in which Trump was heard bragging about kissing and groping women without their consent, saying:

“When you’re a star, they let you do it, you can do anything… grab ’em by the pussy.”

The incident’s widespread media exposure led to Trump’s first public apology during the campaign and caused outrage across the political spectrum.

At least 26 women have publicly accused Trump of sexual misconduct as of September 2020, including his then-wife Ivana.

There were allegations of rape, violence, being kissed and groped without consent, looking under women’s skirts, and walking in on naked women.

In 2016, he denied all accusations, calling them “false smears” and alleged there was a conspiracy against him.

There is very little that is Christ-like about this so-called “Christian”.

I am in no way suggesting that Zwingli resembled in any way the former US President, save in one respect.

Acting in a very un-Christ-like manner unbecoming to a Christian…..

Certainly Zwingli was an educated man and scholarship is something I deeply respect.

His studies led him to see the need for reform in the Catholic Church and this impulse to improve current systems is a wise and necessary impulse anywhere at all times.

There is room for improvement in all things, though that being said I do not believe in simply progress for the sake of progress.

Changes should be considered not just for their potential profit but as well soberly assessed as to the cost of their consequences.

And it is here that the Reformation erred.

Certainly the Church was at this time truly a corrupt institution that the faithful found difficult to swear fealty towards.

But in freeing themselves from the rule of Rome they allowed the powerful within their groups to dominate them with the same sort of abuse from which they had fought to free themselves.

Voltaire wrote about Calvin, Luther and Zwingli:

“If they condemned celibacy in the priests and opened the gates of the convents, it was only to turn all society into a convent.

Shows and entertainments were expressly forbidden by their religion, and for more than two hundred years there was not a single musical instrument allowed in the city of Geneva.

They condemned auricular confession, but they enjoined a public one.

And in Switzerland, Scotland and Geneva, it was performed the same as penance.“

The Church dictated when a man should eat and when he should restrain himself from eating.

Ulrich Zwingli was a pastor in Zurich and was dedicated to the Reformation ideology of Martin Luther.

His first rift with the established religious authorities in Switzerland occurred during the Lenten fast of 1522, when he was present during the eating of sausages at the house of Christoph Froschauer, a printer in the city who later published Zwingli’s translation of the Bible.

According to William Roscoe Estep, Zwingli already held Reformation-oriented convictions for some time before the incident now known as the Affair of the Sausages.

In March 1522, he was invited to partake in a sausage supper that Froschauer served to his workers – who, Froschauer later claimed, were exhausted from putting out the new edition of The Epistles of St. Paul – and to various dignitaries and priests. 

Leo Jud, Klaus Hottinger and Lorenz Hochrütiner were present at the supper and later gained notoriety for their part in the Swiss Reformation.

The meal involved Swiss Fasnachtskiechli and some slices of sharp smoked hard sausage, which had been stored for more than a year.

Because the eating of meat during Lent was prohibited, the event caused public outcry and led to Froschauer being arrested.

Though he himself did not eat the sausages, Zwingli was quick to defend Froschauer from allegations of heresy.

In a sermon titled Von Erkiesen und Freiheit der Speisen (Regarding the Choice and Freedom of Foods), Zwingli argued that fasting should be entirely voluntary, not mandatory.

According to Michael Reeves, Zwingli was advancing the Reformation position that Lent was subject to individual rule, rather than the discipline which was upheld at the time by the Catholic Church.

The Zürich Sausage Affair was interpreted as a demonstration of Christian liberty and is considered to be of similar importance for Switzerland as Martin Luther’s 95 Theses in Wittenberg for the German Reformation.

The Catholic Church historically observes the disciplines of fasting and abstinence at various times each year.

For Catholics, fasting is the reduction of one’s intake of food, while abstinence refers to refraining from something that is good, and not inherently sinful, such as meat.

The Catholic Church teaches that all people are obliged by God to perform some penance for their sins, and that these acts of penance are both personal and corporeal.

Bodily fasting is meaningless unless it is joined with a spiritual avoidance of sin. 

Basil of Caesarea gives the following exhortation regarding fasting:

Let us fast an acceptable and very pleasing fast to the Lord.

True fasting is the estrangement from evil, temperance of tongue, abstinence from anger, separation from desires, slander, falsehood and perjury.

Privation of these is true fasting.

As a man who struggles with self discipline when it comes to his diet I can see a certain wisdom in dietary directives while I simultaneously differ with the notion of someone telling me when and what I should eat.

The Church demanded that the clergy remain single and celibate, which is not natural for all men despite their religious inclinations.

Certainly women and sex distract a man from his devotion to God, but wasn’t the point of Christ that we live our lives to the fullest if we do no harm to others?

In the Old Testament it is suggested that God is a jealous god insisting on total allegiance to Him, but I doubt that the intention of allegiance was the total denial of our biological imperatives.

Certainly there is a kind of freedom for a man to remove himself from the imperatives of woman.

Certainly sex is often not practiced in the life-affirming and mutually satisfactory and freely consented manner in which I believe it was intended.

But whether Zwingli was as chaste a man as he should have been and whether he acted responsibly towards women has come into question when his life prior to Zürich is examined.

On the topic of religious imagery I find myself ambivalent.

Images are representations of reality, but they were never meant to replace reality.

Though faith is, to a certain degree, an abandonment of reason to religion, I think the confusion of image with the intended recipient of devotion is a phenomenon too rare to be relatable a worry.

I think an image of the divine makes it easier to believe in the existence of that which is intangible and invisible to the human senses.

Imagery makes the voyeur more easily accept the existence of God whose sole proof of existence is our inability to prove His non-existence.

Imagery makes the unexplainable more palatable and acceptable to the incredulous.

As much as I respect the Islamic prohibition of images being made of Muhammad, I sincerely doubt whether viewing Muhammad as a man could ever possibly detract the Islamic faithful from fealty to his teachings.

Let me repeat myself:

Murderers and terrorists are not true followers of faith.

Someone once said:

“Don’t try to be a ‘great’ man.

Just be a man and let history make its own judgments.”

Letting our moral leaders be visible human beings, does this diminish the value of what it is they had to teach?

I am uncertain.

Zwingli’s notion of Bible study as opposed to simply a routine of rituals is a practice I approve of.

Our faith should be examined, should be questioned.

If a faith is true it can stand up to examination and questioning.

We are not only impulse and emotion.

We are also capable of reason and rationale.

An infallible and all-powerful God need never fear the legitimate desire for understanding that makes worship more possible.

Where I truly find myself at odds with the man who was Zwingli was in his persecution of those who disagreed with him.

Many in the radical wing of the Reformation became convinced that Zwingli was making too many concessions to the Zürich Council.

They rejected the role of civil government and demanded the immediate establishment of a congregation of the faithful. 

Konrad Grebel (1498 – 1526), the leader of the radicals and the emerging Anabaptist movement, spoke disparagingly of Zwingli in private.

On 15 August 1524 the Council insisted on the obligation to baptise all newborn infants.

Zwingli secretly conferred with Grebel’s group and late in 1524, the Council called for official discussions.

When talks were broken off, Zwingli published Wer Ursache gebe zu Aufruhr (Whoever Causes Unrest) clarifying the opposing points-of-view.

On 17 January 1525 a public debate was held and the Council decided in favour of Zwingli.

Anyone refusing to have their children baptised was required to leave Zürich.

The radicals ignored these measures and on 21 January, they met at the house of the mother of another radical leader, Felix Manz (1498 – 1527).

Grebel and a third leader, George Blaurock (1491 – 1529), performed the first recorded Anabaptist adult baptisms.

On 2 February, the Council repeated the requirement on the baptism of all babies and some who failed to comply were arrested and fined, Manz and Blaurock among them.

Zwingli and Jud interviewed them and more debates were held before the Zürich council.

Meanwhile, the new teachings continued to spread to other parts of the Swiss Confederation as well as a number of Swabian towns in southwestern Germany.

On 6 – 8 November, the last debate on the subject of baptism took place in the Grossmünster.

Grebel, Manz, and Blaurock defended their cause before Zwingli, Leo Jud and other reformers.

There was no serious exchange of views as each side would not move from their positions and the debates degenerated into an uproar, each side shouting abuse at the other.

The Zürich council decided that no compromise was possible.

On 7 March 1526 it released the notorious mandate that no one shall re-baptise another under the penalty of death.

Although Zwingli, technically, had nothing to do with the mandate, there is no indication that he disapproved.

Felix Manz, who had sworn to leave Zürich and not to baptise any more, had deliberately returned and continued the practice.

After he was arrested and tried, he was executed on 5 January 1527 by being drowned in the Limmat River.

He was the first Anabaptist martyr.

Three more were to follow, after which all others either fled or were expelled from Zürich.

Historians have debated whether or not Zwingli turned Zürich into a theocracy.

Certainly it seems that he did not discourage the tendency.

The problem I have with religion is not with the faith itself but with the so-called practitioners of religion, for they divide the world into Us and Them camps, then turn upon their own to dispute the details of that faith causing further division amongst themselves.

The Reformation spread to other parts of the Swiss Confederation, but several cantons resisted, preferring to remain Catholic.

Zwingli formed an alliance of Reformed cantons which divided the Swiss Confederation along religious lines.

In 1529, a war was averted at the last moment between the two sides.

Meanwhile, Zwingli’s ideas came to the attention of Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) and other reformers.

They met at the Marburg Colloquy (1 – 4 October 1529) and agreed on many points of doctrine, but they could not reach an accord on the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist (holy communion wherein wine and bread are symbolically consumed to represent the body and blood of Christ).

The leading Protestant reformers of the time attended at the behest of Philip I of Hesse (1504 – 1567).

Philip’s primary motivation for this conference was political.

He wished to unite the Protestant states in political alliance, and to this end, religious harmony was an important consideration.

Philip I felt the need to reconcile the diverging views of Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli in order to develop a unified Protestant theology.

If Philip wanted the meeting to be a symbol of Protestant unity he was disappointed.

Both Luther and Zwingli fell out over the sacrament of the Eucharist.

Luther believed that the human body of Christ was ubiquitous (present in all places) and so present in the bread and wine.

This was possible because the attributes of God infused Christ’s human nature.

Luther emphasized the oneness of Christ’s person.

Zwingli, who emphasized the distinction of the natures, believed that while Christ in his deity was omnipresent, Christ’s human body could only be present in one place, that is, at the right hand of the Father.

The executive editor for Christianity Today magazine carefully detailed the two views that would forever divide the Lutheran and Reformed view of the Last Supper:

“Luther claimed that the Body of Christ was not eaten in a gross, material way but rather in some mysterious way, which is beyond human understanding.

Yet, Zwingli replied, if the words were taken in their literal sense, the Body had to be eaten in the most grossly material way.

“For this is the meaning they carry:

This bread is that Body of Mine which is given for you.

It was given for us in grossly material form, subject to wounds, blows and death.

As such, therefore, it must be the material of the Last Supper.”

Indeed, to press the literal meaning of the text even farther, it follows that Christ would have again to suffer pain, as his Body was broken again — this time by the teeth of communicants.

Even more absurdly, Christ’s Body would have to be swallowed, digested, even eliminated through the bowels!

Such thoughts were repulsive to Zwingli.

They smacked of cannibalism on the one hand and of the pagan mystery religions on the other.

The main issue for Zwingli, however, was not the irrationality or exegetical fallacy of Luther’s views.

It was rather that Luther put “the chief point of salvation in physically eating the body of Christ,” for he connected it with the forgiveness of sins.

The same motive that had moved Zwingli so strongly to oppose images, the invocation of saints, and baptismal regeneration was present also in the struggle over the Supper: the fear of idolatry.

Salvation was by Christ alone, through faith alone, not through faith and bread.

The object of faith was that which is not seen (Hebrews 11:1) and which therefore cannot be eaten except, again, in a nonliteral, figurative sense.

“Credere est edere,” said Zwingli:

“To believe is to eat.”

To eat the Body and to drink the Blood of Christ in the Supper, then, simply meant to have the Body and Blood of Christ present in the mind.

Near the end of the Colloquy when it was clear an agreement would not be reached, Philipp asked Luther to draft a list of doctrines all that both sides agreed upon.

The Marburg Articles had 15 points and every person at the Colloquy could agree on the first fourteen. 

The 15th article of the Marburg Articles reads:

Fifteenth, regarding the Last Supper of our dear Lord Jesus Christ, we believe and hold that one should practice the use of both species as Christ Himself did, and that the Sacrament at the Altar is a Sacrament of the true Body and Blood of Jesus Christ and the spiritual enjoyment of this very Body and Blood is proper and necessary for every Christian.

Furthermore, that the practice of the Sacrament is given and ordered by God the Almighty like the Word, so that our weak conscience might be moved to faith through the Holy Spirit.

And although we have not been able to agree at this time, whether the true Body and Blood of Christ are corporally present in the bread and wine of Communion, each party should display towards the other Christian love, as far as each respective conscience allows, and both should persistently ask God the Almighty for guidance so that through His Spirit He might bring us to a proper understanding.

The failure to find agreement resulted in strong emotions on both sides.

When the two sides departed, Zwingli cried out in tears:

“There are no people on Earth with whom I would rather be at one than the Lutheran Wittenbergers.”

Because of the differences, Luther initially refused to acknowledge Zwingli and his followers as Christians, though following the Colloquy the two Reformers showed relatively more mutual respect in their writings.

Luther and Zwingli were more concerned with being “right” than being united in a common cause.

In 1531, Zwingli’s alliance applied an unsuccessful food blockade on the Catholic cantons.

Starve or comply.

On 9 October 1531, in a surprise move, the Five States declared war on Zürich.

Zürich’s mobilisation was slow due to internal squabbling.

On 11 October, 3,500 poorly deployed men encountered a Five States force nearly double their size near Kappel.

Many pastors, including Zwingli, were among the soldiers.

The battle lasted less than one hour and Zwingli was among the 500 casualties in the Zürich army.

Zwingli had considered himself first and foremost a soldier of Christ, second a defender of his country, the Swiss Confederation, and third a leader of his city, Zürich, where he had lived for the previous twelve years.

Ironically, he died at the age of 47, not for Christ nor for the Confederation, but for Zürich.

In Table Talk, Luther is recorded saying:

“They say that Zwingli recently died thus.

If his error had prevailed, we would have perished, and our church with us.

It was a judgment of God.

That was always a proud people.

The others, the Papists, will probably also be dealt with by our Lord God.”

Erasmus (1466 – 1536) wrote:

“We are freed from great fear by the death of the two preachers, Zwingli and Oecolampadius, whose fate has wrought an incredible change in the mind of many.

This is the wonderful hand of God on high.”

Johannes Oecolampadius (1482 – 1531) had died on 24 November.

Erasmus also wrote:

“If Bellona (Roman goddess of war) had favoured them, it would have been all over with us.“

Such arrogance!

Such lack of sympathy!

Religious division seems to me as pointless as two bald men fighting over a comb.

If there is indeed a God and each of us has been given an individual mind then I believe that faith must be individual choice.

I believe that religion has its place in teaching us morality and in giving significance through rituals to the various stages of our lives.

It is here where I draw the distinction between individual faith and communal religion.

I desire in no way, shape or form for anyone to follow my example on faith or lack thereof.

That being said, I equally resist anyone trying to force me to follow the rules of a religion which I myself do not practice.

Simply put, I live and let live.

I presently live in a predominantly Muslim nation.

I was raised in a predominantly Christian country.

I would never presume to tell others how to live nor will I willingly submit to others telling me how to live (except where my actions cause harm to others).

In all humility I mourn the loss of anyone past or present, whether I would have agreed with them or not.

Every death diminishes us even if we are unaware of their passing.

I will never celebrate the death of anyone no matter what evils they may have perpetuated, even men as reprehensible as terrorists or tyrants.

That said I will not celebrate the lives of everyone to whom life was given, for we do judge people by the acts that they do.

That a man of religious principle died in battle at the mere age of 47 is cause for sadness.

That a man of religious principle accepted the executions of Anabaptists and a food blockade against Catholic cantons is not cause for commemoration.

My journey, my walk, sought to understand Zwingli and what he represents to the Swiss celebrating his legacy.

I respect his legacy that lives on in the confessions, liturgy, and church orders of the Swiss Reformed churches of today, but I sincerely doubt that had we met that I would have liked him.

In my own way I did get a sense of what his life was like by visiting the places where he once lived.

I do not know in absolute certainty whether I would have acted as he, had my life experience been his.

I do know that Zwingli’s life was remarkable enough to relate it to my readers in the hopes that they might better understand his significance to the Swiss people with whom I lived with for a decade.

I believe that every person is my superior in that I may learn from them.

And the Zwingli walk was certainly…..

Educational.

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Yvonne and Marcel Steiner, Zwingli-Wege: Zu Füss von Wildhaus nach Kappel am Albis – Ein Wander- und Lesebuch