Why Are There Iron Cages Hanging From a Church in Münster?

On January 22, 1536, three Anabaptist leaders were tortured to death in Münster's central square. Their bodies were locked into iron cages and hoisted onto the steeple of St. Lambert's Church. The cages have never come down — surviving a steeple demolition in the 1880s, a direct RAF bombing in 1944, and a full postwar reconstruction. They are lit from within every night.

This article contains affiliate links. If you purchase through them, Hidden World may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

If you stand on the Prinzipalmarkt in Münster and crane your neck, you can make out three iron cages hanging from the steeple of St. Lambert's Church, just above the clock face. They have been there since 1536. They are empty now, but for fifty years they were not. What they held — and what it took to put them there — is one of the most brutal public statements in the history of the Reformation.

A City Seized in God's Name

In February 1534, radical Anabaptists seized control of Münster. The city hall was taken, and Bernhard Knipperdolling was installed as mayor. What followed was a sixteen-month experiment in theocratic rule that would shock Europe and permanently alter the course of the Anabaptist movement.

The man who eventually dominated the occupation was Jan van Leiden — born Johan Beukelszoon on February 2, 1509, in Zevenhoven in the County of Holland. A Dutch tailor's apprentice turned itinerant merchant and innkeeper, he arrived in Münster and quickly became a prophet of the new order. By September 1534, he had proclaimed himself King — not merely of Münster, but of the "New Jerusalem," a title that carried explicit end-times weight. Anthony Arthur's definitive account of these events, The Tailor-King: The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Muenster, traces how a man of no particular social standing built a theocratic monarchy in a major German city within months.

Under van Leiden's rule, money was abolished, private property was seized, books were burned, and polygamy was enforced — he himself took sixteen wives, supposedly in emulation of the biblical patriarchs. Capital punishment was applied for offenses that in any surrounding city would have earned a fine. One of his wives, Elisabeth Wandscherer, openly criticised him during the siege famine of 1535, complaining that the public starved while van Leiden and his court lived in luxury. He had her arrested and personally beheaded her in the marketplace.

The city was held under siege from the outside by Prince-Bishop Franz von Waldeck from the spring of 1534. For over a year, the walls held. Then, on the night of June 24–25, 1535, a deserter named Heinrich Gresbeck guided besieging soldiers through a poorly defended gate. Von Waldeck's troops flooded in. The street fighting was catastrophic for the defenders. Van Leiden, Knipperdolling, and Krechting were captured alive. Von Waldeck wanted a public reckoning, not a quiet execution — so the three men were imprisoned for six months before the city was ready to watch them die. The only eyewitness account of the entire occupation, written by Gresbeck himself, was translated for the first time in False Prophets and Preachers: Henry Gresbeck's Account of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster, and it reads as an interior account of a city losing its mind under apocalyptic pressure.

January 22, 1536: The Execution

On January 22, 1536, Prince-Bishop Franz von Waldeck gathered a crowd in front of the city hall at the Prinzipalmarkt — the same square where the Anabaptists had proclaimed their New Jerusalem — to watch what happened to men who seized a city in God's name and held it for sixteen months.

Executioners worked on all three men with white-hot pliers for approximately sixty minutes. They were attached by spiked collars and torn to pieces. Their tongues were pulled out last. Then each man was stabbed through the heart. Their bodies were bound into iron cages and hoisted from the tower of St. Lambert's Church that same day.

St. Lambert's Church — the Lambertikirche — is the most significant example of Westphalian late Gothic architecture, built between 1375 and 1450. It sits at the north end of the Prinzipalmarkt, so the cages hung in direct sight of the square where the men had ruled and where they were killed. The three cages hang just above the clock face on the tower. Each one is approximately seven feet tall and roughly a yard wide and deep.

Fifty Years of Ravens

The bodies remained in the cages for approximately fifty years. Contemporary artists depicted ravens descending on the tower to feed. After the bones were finally removed, the cages were left in place. No official order to take them down was ever issued. They had become part of the building.

Around 1880, the original spire was demolished and replaced. The cages were repaired — the iron had suffered some rust damage — and reinstalled on the new steeple in their original positions. The logic was simple: they had always been there, and they would remain.

Then came November 18, 1944. A direct RAF bombing hit struck St. Lambert's Church during the wartime campaign against Münster. Jan van Leiden's cage — the highest of the three — came crashing down to the street below. A second fell into the organ loft. The third hung dangling, barely attached. When the church was repaired and rebuilt in 1948, workers restored all three cages and returned them to their original positions, noting the sturdy construction that had allowed them to survive at all. A church that had to be essentially reconstructed after a direct bomb strike still put the cages back.

In 1987, the church installed a small yellow light bulb inside each cage. The official description of the gesture: lit "in memory of their departed souls." The cages have been illuminated from dusk to dawn every night since.

What the Cages Mean Now

The cages remain an active civic controversy. Some residents regard them as a symbol of torture that has no place hanging from a church in a modern city. Others consider them a historical monument — one of the most viscerally preserved records of Reformation-era political violence anywhere in Europe. The debate has no resolution in sight.

What is not disputed is the historical significance of what happened here. The Münster rebellion is considered the decisive end of militant political Anabaptism. No Anabaptist group attempted to seize and hold political power at this scale again. The tradition that survived — and eventually flourished — evolved into the pacifist communities we know today as the Amish, Mennonites, and Hutterites. The iron cages on the tower of St. Lambert's Church are, in that sense, not just a record of three men's deaths. They mark the point at which an entire movement turned away from the world and inward.

If you visit Münster, the Prinzipalmarkt is the centre of the old city, and St. Lambert's Church anchors its northern end. You can see the cages from the square without entering the church. After dark, the yellow lights inside each cage cast a faint glow above the clock face. A guided walking tour of Münster will take you through the Prinzipalmarkt and past the church, and a knowledgeable guide will place the cages in the full context of the city's remarkable history. For those who prefer to go at their own pace, the Münster self-guided audio walking tour covers the Prinzipalmarkt, St. Lamberti, the historic City Hall, and other key sites across the old town.

Are the cages the originals from 1536?

The cages installed today are the same cages that were placed on the tower after the execution in 1536, with repairs made when the steeple was rebuilt around 1880 to address rust damage. They were restored again after sustaining damage in the RAF bombing of November 18, 1944, and reinstalled in 1948. Workers at the time noted the quality of their construction. Whether they are "original" in a strict sense depends on how much repair one considers acceptable — but they have never been replaced wholesale, and they have hung from this tower continuously since the day after the three men died.

Who were the three men in the cages?

Jan van Leiden (born Johan Beukelszoon, 1509–1536) was the self-proclaimed King of the New Jerusalem — a Dutch tailor's apprentice who had taken control of Münster's Anabaptist theocracy by September 1534. Bernhard Knipperdolling was his stadtholder and father-in-law, who had served as mayor of Münster under the Anabaptist regime and was central to its governance. Bernhard Krechting was a senior Anabaptist leader who served as one of van Leiden's lieutenants. All three were tortured publicly on January 22, 1536, and died that day in the Prinzipalmarkt.

How did the city fall after holding off the siege for over a year?

Münster had been under siege by Prince-Bishop Franz von Waldeck since the spring of 1534. The city's defenses held for well over a year, partly due to its substantial walls and moats, and partly due to the desperate determination of the defenders. The end came on the night of June 24–25, 1535, when a deserter named Heinrich Gresbeck — who had slipped out of the starving city — guided besieging soldiers through a gate left inadequately defended. Once inside, von Waldeck's troops opened the main gates. The street fighting was severe, and hundreds of Anabaptists were killed before the city surrendered. Van Leiden, Knipperdolling, and Krechting were taken alive.

Why were the bodies left in the cages for fifty years?

The display of the bodies was an explicit political statement. Prince-Bishop Franz von Waldeck and the authorities who supported him wanted a permanent, visible warning about what happens to those who seize a city and declare themselves rulers of God's chosen people. The location — the tower of St. Lambert's Church, visible from the main market square where the men had ruled and were killed — was deliberate. After the bones were removed, no authority ordered the cages taken down. They had become part of the building's meaning.

What happened to Anabaptism after Münster?

The Münster rebellion was universally condemned, including by most Anabaptists at the time, who regarded the events there as a disastrous aberration from the movement's core beliefs. In the aftermath, both Catholic and Lutheran civil authorities adopted stringent measures against any Anabaptist political organisation. The tradition that survived and grew was overwhelmingly pacifist and separatist — withdrawing from political life rather than attempting to dominate it. The Amish, Mennonites, and Hutterites are the direct descendants of that surviving tradition.

Can you visit St. Lambert's Church today?

Yes. St. Lambert's Church — the Lambertikirche — is an active Catholic church on the Prinzipalmarkt in central Münster. The iron cages are visible from the square outside; entry to the church itself is generally free. The cages are lit each night from dusk to dawn by the yellow bulbs installed in 1987. The church is easily reached on foot from the main train station and is a central stop on most walking routes through Münster's old town.