Early Life
Born in Brognard, France, in the department of Doubs near Montbéliard, Pierre Widmer was raised in a Mennonite family. Widmer attended the Mennonite church at Montbéliard as a young man and was baptised there. He attended the École Normale in Besançon, where he developed a love for poetry.
In 1936, Widmer married Hélène Sommer, the daughter of Pierre Sommer, a man of great enthusiasm for the Mennonite church. He was the best known itinerant French Mennonite preacher, responsible for the first French Mennonite conferences, founder and editor of the journal Christ Seul (Christ Alone).
In Widmer's youth, the Mennonites were a small community in France (about 4,000 people) living in isolated rural communities in Alsace, Lorraine and the Pays de Montbéliard. They were the descendants of the Swiss Anabaptist communities which fled to France during the 16th century Reformation.
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“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
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