Hutterites Are Named After Him But Nobody Remembers Her

In the summer of 1536, an official in Innsbruck wrote a letter about a woman prisoner: guard her carefully, "so that she does not escape, as Jakob Hutter's wife did." Every Hutterite alive is named after Jakob Hutter. Almost none of us could tell you his wife's name. It was Katharina. He called her Treindl. And she got out. I'm Eva Wurz, head cook on a Hutterite colony of 150 people in southern Alberta. This is her story, as far as the records let us tell it. IN THIS VIDEO - The servant girl who carried food to believers hiding in the Tyrolean forests - The first time she was arrested, and the part of her story people leave out - "My wedded sister, Treindl": what Jakob Hutter called her in his letter - Back over the Alps, pregnant, into the country that was hunting her husband - The child nobody can account for - Her escape from prison, months after Jakob was burned in Innsbruck - The one line about her death, and why the newest research says nobody knows how she died - Why our own records kept the men's letters and only a line or two about the women Tell me in the comments: Is there a woman in your family whose husband's name everyone remembers, and hers almost no one does? Tell me her name. If you could learn one thing about Treindl, where she went for two years, what became of her child, or how she really died, which would you choose? I read every one. SOURCES Emmy Barth Maendel, "Katharina Prast: Wife of Jakob Hutter" (Mennonite Quarterly Review, 2022, via Plough): https://www.plough.com/articles/katharina-prast-wife-of-jakob-hutter Jason Landsel, "Katharina Hutter: Heroine of the Radical Reformation" (Plough, 2014): https://www.plough.com/articles/katharina-hutter "The (Radical) Reformer's Wife: Katharina Purst Hutter" (Anabaptist Historians, 2018): https://anabaptisthistorians.org/2018/09/13/the-radical-reformers-wife-katharina-purst-hutter/ Hutterian Brethren, "Jakob Hutter's Arrest and Execution": https://hutterites.org/news/part-iii-jakob-hutters-arrest-execution/ "Jakob Hutter, Radical Reformer" (Plough): https://www.plough.com/articles/jakob-hutter-radical-reformer Christian History Institute, February 25, 1536: https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/dailystory/permalink/gentle-jakob-hutter-died-in-a-test-of-faith Deutsche Biographie, Huter, Jakob: https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz36134.html Wikipedia, Jakob Hutter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Hutter John E. Sharp, "Stones of remembrance" (Anabaptist World, 2016): https://anabaptistworld.org/history-stones-of-remembrance/ Tiroler Tageszeitung on the 2015 Innsbruck memorial: https://www.tt.com/artikel/10642486/steinernes-monument-als-zeichen-der-versoehnung Adam Darlage, "Double Honor: Elite Hutterite Women in the Sixteenth Century," Church History 79:4 (2010): https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/church-history/article/double-honor-elite-hutterite-women-in-the-sixteenth-century/662204E863F145356E8DD329E4ADE920 About the narrator: Eva Wurz is a composite character. Her voice and image are AI-generated. The facts in this video come from the sources above.