The Amana Colonies, A Utopia That Outlasted Its Ideals

In eighteen fifty-five, a group of German religious communalists purchased land in the Iowa River valley and began building something the American Midwest had never seen: a cluster of seven villages designed to hold material goods in common, govern themselves by religious council, and withdraw as completely as possible from the commerce of the surrounding world. Their holdings eventually reached roughly twenty-six thousand acres. They were the Community of True Inspiration, followers of a pietist tradition that had been persecuted in Germany for its refusal to bow to state churches or military service. They called their new home Amana, a Hebrew word meaning to remain faithful.

For nearly eighty years, the Amana Colonies functioned as a genuine communal economy. Members worked in assigned roles, farming, wool-milling, furniture-making, meat-smoking, baking, and received their food, housing, medical care, and a small cash allowance from the community as a whole. There were no wages. There were no private bank accounts. The villages were notable for the quality of their craftsmanship, their food, and the quiet prosperity of a community that had opted out of the boom-and-bust cycles tormenting their Iowa neighbors.

The Great Change came in nineteen thirty-two, at the bottom of the Great Depression. After a contentious vote, the community reorganized itself as a joint-stock corporation and private households. The religious congregation separated from the business operation. Communal dining halls became private kitchens. The experiment was over.

What survived is still extraordinary: seven villages that remain physically intact and largely intact in culture, a refrigerator company, started in nineteen thirty-four and bought by the Amana Society in nineteen thirty-six, that grew into a global appliance brand, and a tourism economy built on the quality goods the colonies had made for more than a century. The Amana Colonies are on the National Register of Historic Places. Drive through them slowly and you will feel the geometry of a different idea about how a community might organize its life.