Tour Leader’s Blog

TourMagination regularly visits the isolated, ancient chapel at Würzbrunnen in the Emmental. But yesterday morning, for the first time, we gained overall perspective of this main source of our Swiss ancestors by climbing a 37-meter tower on the nearby long Kurzenberg. We stood above the tops of tall white pines from which the tower was built in 2002 (the previous one having been burned by human carelessness). There was a spectacular 360-degree view. On the distant bluish horizon to the north lay the Mennonite-populated Jura, which we had visited two days earlier. To the west, at the foot of the Kurzenberg, was Linden, where in the afternoon we would photograph Thierstein (Derstine) family gravestones. Southwestward, across the first valley, was the Buchholterberg range, original home of the Roth-Ruth family. On its horizon rose the unmistakable, blocky Stockhorn, telling us the location of Erlenbach in the Simmental, where Jacob Amman had grown up. We realized that we were perched on the east-west running line between the Emmental to our near north, where bishop Hans Reist lived, and the Bernese Oberland to the south, prime source of the conservative Amish peoplehood.

Just below us near Bowil, in 1693, had come the historic confrontation that had divided so many of our Bernese Anabaptist ancestors. Most spectacular of all, on the southern horizon rose the world-renowned, misty white chain of Alps, framed in front with the notched sequence called the “Seven Stallions.” And a little eastward was the massive brown Hohgant range, recently made known to Swiss readers of the novel Die Furgge, as the home region of persecuted 17th century Mennonites.

~ John Ruth