Peter Riedemann was a shoemaker by trade, a prolific and articulate writer and a Hutterite leader sometimes considered the second founder of the Hutterite brotherhood. Riedeman, known as “tall Peter” and “Peter of Gmunden” was born in Hirschberg, Silsea, Germany, in 1506. Little else is known about him until he joined the Anabaptist movement and was arrested for his faith as a young man.
While imprisoned in Gmunden, he wrote his first comprehensive work, his confession of faith, penned at the age of 23. This confession, published in English as Love is like Fire: The Confession of an Anabaptist Prisoner, is impressively comprehensive in biblical reference and spirituality as characteristic of early Anabaptist writing. Though he was not Hutterite at the time, this account has been faithfully preserved by the Hutterite Church in various manuscript forms.
After three years, Riedemann escaped prison and left Austria for Moravia. While traveling, he continued to write not only well-crafted doctrine, but also an abundance of correspondence and many hymns. Along the way he married and his letters from this time include a handful that might be considered love letters to his Anabaptist “marital sister,” Katharina.
In Moravia he met and joined the new and growing Hutterite church. Hutterites are one of three branches of Anabaptism; the other branches are Brethren and Mennonites. Today Hutterites live communally in rural colonies in the U.S. and Canada. Their community settlements are called “Bruderhofs.”
Riedemann spent the next several years writing as he traveled across Moravia and Austria, serving as a missionary of the Anabaptist message and bishop of the Hutterite Church. Riedemann dedicated letters, writings and pastoral care to believers of existing and newly formed communities of faith in their daily living and persecution.
These efforts are interrupted by a second imprisonment lasting around four years. Upon his release, with a promise not to teach in Nürnberg, Riedemann continued writing and returned to pastoral travel and work. In 1540 he was caught and imprisoned a third time by authorities of Philip Hesse. Notably, Hesse did not send Anabaptists to their deaths, and at least one jailor-administrator was even sympathetic to Anabaptist ideals.
During the next two years Riedmann found himself first chained in darkness, and with some luck, later moved to the castle of Wolkersdorf where he made shoes with the cobbler, wrote and even received visitors. In addition to his numerous letters and compositions he drafted a larger work, a second confession of faith.
Intended as a lengthy explanation of the Anabaptist beliefs to Hesse and composed in leisure, Rechenschaft became a carefully detailed and well-crafted statement. In testament to Riedemann’s way with words and leadership, both of his confessions remain influential and important Anabaptist-Hutterite texts.
In 1542, a time of trouble within the brotherhood community prompted Riedemann to return to Moravia and leadership. He became co-bishop with Leonhard Lanzenstiel. The duo worked well, balancing each other in spiritual and practical leadership to hold their community together. They provided courage and hope even as the Hutterite community was severely persecuted and forced out of their homeland. On the run and homeless in exile, the few surviving members of the Hutterite brethren found safety in the mountains of what is now Slovakia.
Riedemann died on the Bruderhof of Protzko, Slovakia, in December 1556, at the age of 50. He left a considerable body of written work that included doctrine, correspondence and numerous hymns, and a legacy of leadership for 27 years in ministry and nine years in prison.
Hannah Keeney has been an archivist at Fresno Pacific University’s Mennonite Library & Archives since 2014. She is a 2011 graduate of Bluffton University and graduated from Indiana University with a master’s in library science—archives and record management in 2014. In 2012, she participated in PULSE (Pittsburgh Urban Leadership Service Experience).
