After twenty years of marriage and 10 children, her husband claimed that God calls him.

Directed by visions, he soon returned and settled in the nearby Ranftschlucht, the gorge on the Melchaa, a stone's throw from his family's home.

[2] Dorothea occasionally went down to the hermitage of Bruder Klaus (von Flüe's then popular name) to talk with him about domestic things or the education of the children.

Dorothea allowed her husband to leave the family and start his life as a hermit, but the contemporary sources provide only rudimentary data.

In 1488 she was described in the oldest biography of Bruder Klaus as a godly and extremely pious woman.