A Short History of the Hutterites

And all that believed were together, and had all things in common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.

—ACTS 2:44–45

THE HUTTERITE FAITH was born in the sixteenth century when Jacob Hutter, an Austrian hatmaker, led a fledgling group of Anabaptists to a new kind of Christian community. On a dusty path in Moravia in 1528, a handful of refugees from Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and Austria put a rugged blanket on the ground and on it placed all of their possessions, including everything they were carrying in their pockets. Thus began our history.

Inspired by the early church in Jerusalem, they modeled their faith on the second chapter of Acts, verses 44–45, in the Bible: “And all that believed were together, and had all things in common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.” Hutter’s passionate vision of a society where property was shared and people worked together for the common good gave birth to the Hutterite Church and way of life, but his belief in community life, adult baptism, and pacifism provoked hatred and intolerance from the state and the predominant religions, forcing Hutterites to flee across Europe for nearly four hundred years.

In 1536, Hutter was burned at the stake in Innsbruck, Austria, for refusing to denounce his faith, as were many of our other forefathers. Still some survived and, in 1770, found refuge in the Russian Ukraine until their military exemption status was rescinded and they escaped to the United States.

The Hutterites arrived in New York on July 5, 1874, on the Hammonia, which had sailed from Russia. Battered but not defeated, they were determined to pool their resources and start over. My great-grandfather Jakob Maendel was among them. The first Hutterite Colony on North American soil was established in 1874 on the banks of the Missouri River near Yankton, South Dakota. It has special historic significance to all Hutterites today and is still in operation.

During World War I, entire Hutterite communities moved to Canada to avoid persecution as conscientious objectors. After the war, realizing their value as land and livestock farmers, the American government invited them to return to the United States. One-third of them willingly did, but the rest remained in Canada and established new colonies throughout western Canada, including my home colonies of New Rosedale and Fairholme in Manitoba.

The Hutterite commitment to the common ownership of goods sets them apart from the Amish and the Mennonites and distinguishes them as the finest and most successful example of community life in the modern world. Today their population sits at approximately forty-five thousand on four hundred colonies in the northwestern United States and Canadian prairies.