Of these nineteen years, the first three were spent in or about Nördlingen, where Henry was the beloved director of a group of mystics which included his mother.
He translated the book of Mechtilde of Magdeburg into High German[1] and urged other mystics, such as Margaretha Ebner, to write down accounts of their visions.
In 1339, a short while after his return to Nördlingen, his fidelity in abiding by the interdict brought him into a critical position, and he went by way of Augsburg and Constance to Basel, where he found Tauler and where several of the Gottesfreunde followed him from Bavaria.
At Basel (January, 1339), which he now made the centre of his activity, his success in the confessional and pulpit brought crowds to him, especially in 1345. Letters to Margaretha Ebner give an idea of his work, fears, and hopes; in 1346-7 he made several trips to Cologne and Bamberg; then he left Basel, much regretted by the Gottesfreunde, and after a wandering life of preaching in Alsace (1348-9), while the Black Death was raging in Germany, he returned to his country (1350), a little before the death of Margaretha Ebner.
His works consist of a collection of fifty-eight letters, of which only one manuscript remains (British Museum).