Hutterite Beginnings: Communitarian Experiments during the Reformation

Werner O. Packull (1941-2018) was a professor of history at Conrad Grebel College, University of Waterloo, Ontario, where he taught from 1983-2003. Born in East Prussia and raised in postwar Germany and Canada, he completed his PhD in History at Queen's University in 1974. A wide-ranging and prolific scholar of sixteenth-century Anabaptism, his research encompassed the South German-Austrian Anabaptist movement, the Hutterites, the writings of Pilgram Marpeck, and the missionary work of Melchior Hoffman, among other subjects. He was co-author of the landmark 1975 article "From Monogenesis to Polygenesis: The Historical Discussion of Anabaptist Origins" (Mennonite Quarterly Review) and wrote or edited seven books over the course of his career. He is the author of Mysticism and the Early South German-Austrian Anabaptist Movement, 1525-1531 and Peter Riedemann: Shaper of the Hutterite Tradition (2007).