The Sixteen-Month Anabaptist Theocracy in the German City of Münster That Ended on 24 June 1535 With the Polygamous King-Prophet Hanged in an Iron Cage From the Cathedral Spire

The Anabaptist movement that emerged from the early German Reformation in the 1520s rejected infant baptism, advocated rebaptism of adult believers, and (in its radical wing) held millenarian expectations of the imminent Second Coming. The mainstream Lutheran and Catholic authorities both regarded Anabaptists as heretical; persecution had driven approximately 1,500 Anabaptists to their deaths by execution across the German lands by 1530.

The free imperial city of Münster in Westphalia became the centre of the radical wing in 1533-1534 through the preaching of the local Lutheran reformer Bernhard Rothmann. Rothmann moved progressively from Lutheran to Anabaptist theology across 1533. Anabaptist refugees from the Netherlands began arriving in the city in late 1533. By February 1534 the Anabaptists had won the city council elections.

The new council expelled all non-Anabaptists from the city on 27 February 1534. Approximately 2,000 Lutheran and Catholic residents were forced out into the surrounding countryside, leaving the city with a population of approximately 8,000 — predominantly Anabaptist immigrants from across northern Germany and the Netherlands.

The Bishop of Münster Franz von Waldeck — who had been exiled by the same political shift — immediately raised an army and began the siege of the city on 28 February 1534. The siege lasted 16 months.

Jan van Leiden

The senior Anabaptist religious authority in the city was initially the Dutch baker Jan Matthys, a self-proclaimed prophet. Matthys was killed on Easter Sunday 1534 during a sortie outside the walls — he had announced a divine revelation that he should ride out alone to confront the besieging army; the besiegers killed him within minutes.

Leadership devolved to his junior associate Jan van Leiden (born Jan Beuckelszoon, a Dutch tailor from Leiden). Van Leiden proclaimed himself King of the New Jerusalem in September 1534. He sat on a throne in the marketplace, wore golden robes, and presided over the city’s religious and civil administration. He was 25 years old.

His policies were specific and dramatic:

— Community of goods: all private property was confiscated; food, clothing, and lodging were distributed by central administration — Mandatory polygamy: the Old Testament patriarchs had multiple wives; the King of the New Jerusalem now imposed the same on his subjects. Adult men were required to take multiple wives; adult women had no right of refusal. The city’s roughly 5,000 women (predominantly Anabaptist immigrants) were redistributed among approximately 2,000 adult men — Capital punishment for heresy: any expression of religious doubt was punished by execution. Van Leiden personally beheaded one of his own wives (Elisabeth Wandscherer) in the marketplace in spring 1535 for “rebelliousness” — Apocalyptic timeline: van Leiden repeatedly predicted the imminent arrival of Christ to defeat the besieging Bishop’s army. The predictions did not come true

The polygamy decree produced internal opposition. A 1534 Lutheran rebellion within the city by approximately 200 male residents who refused the multiple-wives requirement was suppressed; the rebels were executed.

The fall

The siege had reduced the city’s population to approximately 7,000 by spring 1535, with significant malnutrition. On the night of 24-25 June 1535 two defectors guided the Bishop’s army through a unguarded section of the wall. The besieging army poured in. The Anabaptist defence collapsed within hours. Approximately 1,000 Anabaptists were killed in the street fighting and immediate massacre. Most of the surviving women were forcibly returned to the Catholic Church under threat of death.

Jan van Leiden, Bernhard Knipperdolling (his deputy), and Bernhard Krechting (the chief Anabaptist judge) were captured alive.

22 January 1536

The three were held for six months while the Bishop arranged a public execution. They were tortured publicly for an hour each on 22 January 1536 in the Münster marketplace with red-hot iron tongs. The tongs were applied progressively to portions of their bodies. Knipperdolling tried to break his own neck against the iron post he was tied to during the torture; the executioners restrained him to continue the punishment. After the hour the three were finished by dagger thrusts to the heart.

Their bodies were placed in three large iron cages and hoisted up the spire of Saint Lambert’s Church in central Münster. The bones remained in the cages for approximately 50 years before they were removed; the cages themselves were left in place.

The three iron cages are still hanging from the spire of Saint Lambert’s Church in 2026, approximately 65 metres above the marketplace. They are visible from most of central Münster and are one of the most-photographed features of the city.

What it produced

The Münster Rebellion destroyed the radical millenarian wing of Anabaptism. The surviving moderate Anabaptists — under the Dutch leader Menno Simons, whose followers became the Mennonites — explicitly rejected the use of force, the seizure of political power, and millenarian prophecy. The non-violent pacifist Anabaptist tradition that survived the 16th-century persecutions and produced the modern Mennonite, Amish, Hutterite, and Brethren communities is a direct response to the Münster precedent.

Bernhard Rothmann — the original local Lutheran reformer who had brought Anabaptism to the city — was not captured at the fall. He had reportedly died inside the city during the siege; his body was not identified. The conspiracy theory that he had escaped and lived under a false identity for decades afterwards persisted in north German popular memory into the 18th century but has no documentary support.