The Quiet Cowardice of Bernese Order

When a self-proclaimed prophet promises infinite energy from thin air, the credulous tend to gather. In the quiet Bernese village of Linden, Paul Baumann did precisely that from the 1950s onward, surrounding himself with roughly 300 devoted followers in a secretive Christian fundamentalist community named Methernitha. Under the pretext of spiritual purification and promising access to a miraculous device called the Testatika, the man known as Vatti operated a system of child abuse behind barbed wire, enforced by a strict commandment of absolute silence.

That silence was briefly punctured in 1976, when a nineteen-year-old victim brought Baumann to justice in Thun, resulting in a seven-year prison sentence. Yet, as Marina Klauser’s documentary series Der Engelmacher reveals, the Swiss judicial apparatus provided nothing more than a temporary pause. On the very day of his sentencing, under the guise of bidding farewell to his family, Baumann assaulted a group of girls in a carpet warehouse. Upon his release from prison, his immediate destination was the girls' house back in Linden.

Far from deterring him, the period of incarceration was followed by an escalation. Former members account for at least ten girls and women who fell victim to Baumann after his return, with the scale of abuse surpassing even his pre-conviction activities. The abuse did not end through police action, administrative diligence, or community outrage. It ceased only when nature took its course, and old age stripped the cult leader of his physical capacity.

The institutional failure in Bernese country is striking. The 1976 court judgment explicitly mandated post-release supervision for Baumann. Instead, Swiss authorities spent decades looking away, demonstrating a naive, almost willful blindness. Maintaining the illusion of orderly rural peace evidently took precedence over enforcing the law against a convicted predator.

Offered the opportunity to address these failures in the new documentary, both the municipality of Linden and the Methernitha organization, which still exists today, declined to comment. Decades later, the inclination to hide behind closed doors remains entirely intact.

Written by Thomas Nussbaumer thomas.nussbaumer@alpineweekly.com