Klaus Hottinger was a shoemaker born in

Zollikon Zollikon is a municipality in the district of Meilen in the canton of Zürich, Switzerland known for being one of Switzerland's most exclusive districts. Besides the main settlement of Zollikon, which lies on the shore of Lake Zürich, the municip ...

. A disciple of

Zwingli Huldrych or Ulrich Zwingli (1 January 1484 – 11 October 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 Univ ...

, he took part in the famous " Affair of the Sausages" of 1522 which marked the public beginning of the

Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...

in Switzerland. In 1523 he overthrew a wooden

crucifix A crucifix (from Latin ''cruci fixus'' meaning "(one) fixed to a cross") is a cross with an image of Jesus on it, as distinct from a bare cross. The representation of Jesus himself on the cross is referred to in English as the ''corpus'' (Lati ...

at Stadelhofen on the outskirts of Zurich. He was as a consequence banished from the canton in November 1523. He was executed in Lucerne on 9 March 1524, despite Zurich's effort to intervene on his behalf, and thus became the first martyr of the Swiss

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

movement.Hans Ulrich Bächtold in the ''Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz'' Retrieved 2011-03-14.
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Notes

References

* * *: "A band of citizens, under the lead of a shoemaker, Klaus Hottinger, overthrew the great wooden crucifix in Stadelhofen, near the city, and committed other ..."

External links

Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online (GAMEO)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hottinger, Klaus 16th-century Protestant martyrs 1524 deaths Swiss Protestants 16th-century Swiss people

Klaus Klaus is a German, Dutch and Scandinavian given name and surname. It originated as a short form of Nikolaus, a German form of the Greek given name Nicholas. Notable persons whose family name is Klaus * Billy Klaus (1928–2006), American base ...

Year of birth unknown