♂Hans Landis

Hans Landis (about 1544 – September 1614) was an Anabaptist^W preacher of the Horgerberg, in the parish of Horgen in Canton Zürich, Switzerland. He was possibly the ninth great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through his son Felix Landis (baptized 1589).

Horgen

He was probably born about 1544 at Horgen. Hans Landis and Margaretha Hochstrasser were raising a family at Horgen by the 1580s. Their son Hans was baptized there on 31 December 1581 and their son Felix on 1 June 1589, and they also had a daughter, Margaretha, who is said to have died in 1672.

Preacher and prisoner

Hans became a preacher among the Anabaptists of the Horgerberg, and the council of Zürich, which belonged to the Reformed^W church, ordered his arrest to stop his teaching. He would not give up his convictions. He was sent in irons from Zürich to the Catholics at Solothurn, freed with the help of some sympathizers, taken again and brought back to Zürich, where he was closely examined on his doctrine. In September 1614 he was beheaded with the sword. The authorities told the common people that he had died for defying them rather than for his religion. A Landis family history of 1888 records that he was the last person to be beheaded for his religion there, though the persecution did not end with him.

The execution

A letter written by a preacher at Zürich in 1659 describes the day. Hans was tall, with a long black beard going a little gray, and a deep voice. He was led out on a rope to the Wolfsstatt, the place of execution, where his wife and child came to him in tears to say goodbye; he asked them to leave so that his resolve would not be shaken. The executioner, Paul Volmar, raised both hands to heaven and begged forgiveness for what he had to do, and Hans comforted the man who was about to kill him: “I have already forgiven you, may God forgive you also; I am aware that you must execute the sentence of the magistracy.” Then he was beheaded.

Notes

Birth and death

The birth about 1544 at Horgen comes from WikiTree, which reckons it from his being “in his seventieth year” at his death and places him on the Horgerberg. Wikipedia’s article gives his birth as about 1568. The 1888 family history gives only September 1614 for the execution; WikiTree gives 29 or 30 September.

The arrest and execution

The account of the arrest, the journey to Solothurn, the execution and the claim that he was the last to die for his religion in that place comes from D. B. Landis, The Landis Family of Lancaster County (1888), pages 9 and 10, which cites the Martyrs Mirror^W in Rupp’s translation of 1837, page 1003. The description of the execution is a footnote on page 10, quoting a letter of 1659 from a preacher at Zürich. The book calls him a “pious witness of the Divine truth” and a “Pietus or Mennonite preacher”.

Marriage and children

The Horgen church records, as transcribed on FamilySearch, give the baptism of “Felix Landys”, son of Hans Landys and Margreth Hochstrasser, on 1 June 1589, and of Hans, son of Hans Landis, on 31 December 1581; the 1581 entry names only the father. WikiTree says Hans first married Barbara Hochstrasser, the mother of a daughter Margreth baptized at Horgen on 29 May 1580, and married her sister Margaretha before 1582; it marks these records as unsourced. WikiTree lists further children of the second marriage: Rudolph (1583), Heinrich (1585), Verena (1587), Adeli (1588), Jagli (1591), Margreth (1594) and Welti (1597). The daughter Margaretha’s death in 1672 comes from a compiled member tree.

The line of descent

The 1888 family history names Felix Landis as “son of Hans, beheaded at Zurich, 1614”. The identification of the executed preacher with the father at the Horgen baptisms is a compiled one, made on WikiTree. The descent below Felix also rests on compiled links, as his own page explains, so the whole line stays open.