For the anniversary, the town hall in Hustopeče is repairing a medieval well in the place where the Habans settled less than five centuries ago. “Part of the celebrations will be the unveiling of a memorial plaque at the well of Jakob Hutter, the founder of the Haban community in our country,” said Soňa Nezhodová, head of the local Municipal Museum and Gallery, to Práva. Blacksmith David Hönig is working on the work.
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“We are very happy about that, because he comes from neighboring Šakvice and his mother is born Hutter, so history has come together beautifully,” said Nezhodová. Kovář Práva told Práva that they were probably related to Jakoben Hutter, but he did not have a pedigree.
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They lived in communities
The Habans lived in communal communities. From Switzerland, where the movement comes from, they reached Moravia via Germany and Austria. The Habans also included settlers who arrived from Tyrol and Carinthia in Hustopeče in 1531. They bought a house by a medieval well.
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“Jakob Hutter founded the community in this house and put into practice the model of church and property community, which is still valid for hutters,” adds Soňa Nezhodová.
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The Hustopeče Habans made Hutter a pastor and the town became the center of the Moravian Habans. But the pastor was arrested three years later and taken to Innsbruck. After being tortured, he was burned alive on February 25, 1536. The group of Baptists then began to call themselves hutterites. In the south of Moravia, but also in western Slovakia, they settled for the next decade.
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The most numerous settlements were in the Břeclav and Hodonín regions, where they devoted themselves to pottery, textile production and viticulture. In Velké Bílovice, seventeen kilometers away, where there was a large group of Habans, they are still remembered not only by the finds of pottery, but also by the winery, which bears the name Habánské sklepy as a reminder of the tradition.
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They moved overseas
On September 28, 1622, however, Cardinal Dietrichstein signed an edict on the extradition of the Baptists. “Since that day, the Hutterites have had four weeks to displace or accept the Catholic faith,” Nezhodova recalled.
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The Hutterites then literally traveled the world. They went to Slovakia, lived in Ukraine and Romania. In the end, however, they decided to relocate across the ocean. Their groups are home mainly to the United States and Canada.
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A meeting of community representatives in Hustopeče, the cradle of the Hutterites, will take place in the autumn. The city is deliberately preparing it for the weekend preceding the round anniversary of the four centuries since the Dietrichsteins took action. There will also be a commemorative program on Friday the 23rd and Saturday the 24th of September. A detailed action plan is just being born.
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