Baiersdorf (Freistaat Bayern, Germany) Baiersdorf, in the 1950s
a small market town near Erlangen, once a district government
seat in the margravure of Brandenburg. In April 1531 an
Anabaptist congregation was broken up there, which had existed
since Pentecost of 1530, and numbered about 50 members, in part
scattered over the region of Nürnberg and Bamberg. Their
beginnings go back to 1525, when they are said to have accepted
rebaptism, without outside instigation, because of independently
acquired conviction resulting from Bible study. This is the
official record sent to the margrave at Ansbach on 9 July 1530,
according to which Melchior Kern testified that it was true that
he had been baptized again, for he had always heard from the
preachers: He who believes and is baptized will be saved. Philip
Jakob testified that the Word of God had directed him to
rebaptism. Pastor Wolfgang Vogel of Eltersdorf, who was executed
in Nürnberg on 26 March 1527, the carpenter Thomas Spiegel at
Ostheim, and Johannes von Bibe