Brother Klaus and his grandson Konrad Scheuber

Niklaus von Flüe was born in Obwalden in 1417. He farmed on the Flüeli, sat on the council and had five sons and five daughters with Dorothea Wyss. On 16 October 1467, with her consent, he left his family and from then on lived as a hermit in the Ranft gorge, a few minutes from his farm. Word that he lived without food drew pilgrims, people seeking advice and envoys.

In 1481 the Confederates meeting at Stans were close to breaking apart over the quarrel between town and country cantons. The parish priest of Stans, Heini am Grund, hurried to the Ranft, and with the hermit’s advice the Stans Agreement was reached. Brother Klaus died on 21 March 1487. He was beatified in 1669 and canonised in 1947, and is regarded as the patron saint of Switzerland.

His daughter Dorothea married the mountain farmer Hensli Scheuber of Wolfenschiessen. Their son Konrad, born in 1481, went to war in Bellinzona and Pavia as a young man, became churchwarden, cantonal councillor and in 1543, for one year, Landammann of Nidwalden. From 1544 he followed his grandfather’s example and lived as a hermit, first in the Ranft and from 1547 on the Bettelrüti above Altzellen, where as «Brother Konrad» he advised councillors, judges and ordinary people.

Konrad died in 1559; his grave in the parish church of Wolfenschiessen became a place of pilgrimage, and since 1867 his hermit’s cell has stood beside the church. He had only daughters, so there is no line through the Scheuber name. Today’s Scheubers are nevertheless descendants of Brother Klaus: through Konrad’s daughter Christine, who married Melchior Christen, and her descendant Franziska Barmettler, who married the gypsum miller Josef Mariä Scheuber in 1856.

Sources: Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, «Flüe, Niklaus von» (Ernst Walder, Heinrich Stirnimann) and «Scheuber, Konrad» (Peter Steiner); Peter Steiner, «Notes on the family history», in the Book of the Scheuber.