König der letzten Tage ratings (TV show, 1993-)

The 1530s. Many are convinced that the Day of Judgement is at hand. A protest movement is making the heart of Europe beat faster and louder: it is a protest against the dissipation of the Catholic clergy, but also against the religious remedies prescibed by Lutheranism. The Anabaptist movement preaches the second coming and prophesies that all enemies of the "true faith" will "drown in rivers of blood". All those, however, who renounce the devil are promised both earthly and heavenly happiness in a "new Jerusalem". When the Anabaptist doctrine overtakes the flourishing town of Münster ("the pearl of Westphalia") and the town's Catholics are either driven out or forced to live in a ghetto, the newly-elected Prince-Bishop of Münster and Osnabrück, Count Franz Waldeck, decides to take fiercer action against what he sees as the "Anabaptist scourge"; anyone who lets themselves be rebaptized in his diocese, whether male or female, is to be hanged from the nearest tree. Sebastian Kien, a ...