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It was a warm summer night in 1938. In a tiny Austrian village, Franz Jaegerstaetter startled awake, terrified by a vivid dream. In it he saw a “shining train circling a mountain” and men, women, and children rushing to get a place on it. Then, suddenly, he heard a voice that warned: “This train is going to hell.”
Franz’s terror over the dream never faded, and as he pondered its meaning, he came to see the train as symbolizing Nazism. How he responded to this insight proved dangerous for him and disturbing for the people around him. And it raises potentially troubling questions for us.
Was Franz Jaegerstaetter just a dreamer, a man to be dismissed? Or was he a visionary whose life holds urgent meaning for Christians today?
Fleeting Bliss. Born in 1907 in the upper Austrian village of St. Radegund, Franz Jaegerstaetter began life normally enough. He was minimally educated but quite well read. It seems he also had a wild side and ended up fathering a child out of wedlock. Eventually, however, he settled down to a quiet life of farming.
“In his youth,” he was “just like other people,” his pastor…
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