“A Separatist Song”: A Newly Discovered Poemabout Zoar’s Beginnings

COMMUNAL SOCIETIES82 "prophetic sermons, ecstasies and visions" and enter trances that could last for days. 2 According to historian Eberhard Fritz:Allegedly she saw the spirits of heaven, and she was convinced that all things returned after the souls had been cleansed in heaven so anyone could be saved.She thought that even the devil would be saved some day and believed that she knew which of those deceased were in heaven and which still stayed in hell.She encouraged people to do penance and dismissed the church, its ministers and catechism.When she experienced states of trance she did not feel any pain. 3 After several years of preaching such borderline blasphemy, Grubermann fled from Teufen, hiding in several locations, and was briefly imprisoned.The three Huber men met Barbara Grubermann after she had escaped from prison in 1792 at the Zurich home of a prominent Swiss Pietist minister, Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801), who was sympathetic to Radical Pietism; the Hubers invited her to come and stay in Rottenacker. 4 After her arrival in Rottenacker, Grubermann held semisecret meetings in believers' homes, even while attending church and taking Holy Communion.It was only around 1800, with a new minister and local governor/bailiff in town, that the rebellion broke out into the open and the dissenters began provoking the authorities.Political and military events also contributed to the unrest-Napoleon Bonaparte had declared himself the French emperor, and the Wrttemberg ruler Duke (later Elector, and still later King) Friedrich II was caught up in the turmoil, needing soldiers for the war effort.What he did not need was a group of pesky religious dissenters to upset the status quo still further.Let us let Daniel tell his story.He first thanks God for his deliverance to a place such as Zoar:Verse 1 My heart, soul and spirit [Gemt] [Give] laud and praise, day and night; God's grace, loyalty and goodness Has brought us this far, Into a land where calm