Meeting Bruder Klaus

Part II

Niklaus von Flüe was born to a successful and well-respected Swiss farming family in the Flüeli-Ranft region near Sachseln, Canton Obwalden, Switzerland, in 1417. At the age of 30, he married a local teenager named Dorothy, and together they brought forth ten children, while Klaus maintained and extended his family’s position in his community. He served his community as a soldier, councilor, and judge. He was known for his strong moral conscience, practical prudence, and thoughtful wisdom. Then he received a call from God that changed everything.

Biographers, theologians and, most recently, psychologists have translated and interpreted in different ways the historical resources about mystical visions Bruder Klaus experienced throughout his life. These visions began while he was still in the womb. But all commentators have come away with deep respect for his genuine holiness.

The first biography was written by the Abbot of Einsiedeln Abbey while Niklaus was still alive (1). Bruder Klaus recognized both the places and people at his infant baptism, because he had seen them before he was born, and his adult spiritual director, Heiny am Grund of Lucerne, authenticated these recollections (2).

Bruder Klaus gave wise counsel that prevented a civil war from arising in a conflict between urban and rural cantons, at the Tagsatzung of Stans in 1481.

His direct and powerful experiences of God eventually led him to become a hermit in the Ranft, with his wife Dorothy’s full support. She continued to raise their family in their original family home, while his older sons worked the farm.

Bruder Klaus himself was illiterate. He drew maps of his encounters with a living God, and shared his drawings with trusted priests and monks as well as his loyal wife and children. As a man of the people and a man of his time, Bruder Klaus lived by the sacraments and prayer. He used images to communicate the ineffable.

His invincible moral character has continued to inspire pilgrimages to his simple home, and awe for his holiness, for more than six hundred years. He lived in a time of polarization, greed, and the violence of war – a time not unlike our own — through a century when even the Church was electing three conflicting popes.

And his legacy of faith has endured. He was beatified in 1669, and canonized in 1947 by Pope Pius XII.

I could go on and on myself, trying to tell you about Bruder Klaus.

What I really want to do today is to show you. Here’s an opportunity for a virtual pilgrimage of your own. I think you’ll find the film and images that follow worthy of meditation, should you feel inclined to experience the spirit of St. Niklaus, and his lasting impact, through traditional sounds and scenery of Switzerland that still resonate today. Film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=sm2Wjjs3-f0

Peace be with you.

Bruder Klaus Prayer

“My Lord and my God, take from me everything that distances me from you.
My Lord and my God, give me everything that brings me closer to you.
My Lord and my God, detach me from myself to give my all to you.”

Source, with attribution to the Catechism of the Catholic Church,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_of_Flüe

© Copyright 2025 by Margaret King Zacharias

Sources

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_of_Flüe
2. Von Franz, Marie-Louise, Niklaus von Flüe and Saint Perpetua: A Psychological Interpretation of Their Visions, Asheville, N.C., 2022, pp. 10-11, IP 15, fn. 13-24. This work is cited here for scholarly translation of original German biographical sources and summary of historical facts about Bruder Klaus, originally written in German and only recently translated; without endorsing all interpretations made in this volume, per the caveat offered in the book below.
3. Ulanov, Anne Belford, and Dueck, Alvin, The Living God and Our Living Psyche: What Christians Can Learn from Carl Jung, B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2008. The authors warn that, although theology and psychology can each offer valuable insights to the other, they are not the same, and not all of their different perspectives always overlap or agree.

Images:

Featured Image: Main room of the home where St. Niklaus von Flüe lived with his wife Dorothy and ten children during the first half of his life. Attribution: A Pakeha, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. File URL

Painting after the prayer wheel visions hand-drawn by St. Nicholas of Flüe. Attribution: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Woodcut after the map of his visions, hand-drawn by St. Niklaus von Flüe. He called the original scrap he used for prayer in the humble Ranft hermitage, his “book.” Attribution: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.