Hutterite Studies: Celebrating the Life and Work of an Anabaptist Scholar

Hutterite Studies was first published in 1961 in honour of Robert Friedmann's 70th birthday. It is a collection of the historian's most important works on the Hutterites. It spans history, the basis for their faith, daily life and literature of the Hutterites; it includes biographies of important Hutterite leaders. Robert Friedmann is one of those historians whose texts give the sense that the writer's personal life is not only touched, but enriched by the object of research, and that the presentation of the research would be far less spirited without those personal experiences.

Robert Friedmann was born June 9, 1891, in Vienna, Austria. Following his education as an engineer in the Technical University of Vienna, 1908-14, he studied history and philosophy at the University of Vienna, 1920-24, securing the Ph. D. in 1924. He then taught at Gymnasiums in Vienna 1925-38. He began his Anabaptist studies in 1923, when he was commissioned by the Verein fur Reformationsgeschichte to edit a volume of Hutterite epistles. In 1939 he left Austria, reaching the United States via England the same year. He was Honorary Fellow at Yale Divinity School in 1940, and Research Fellow in Anabaptist Studies at Goshen College 1940-43. For a part of the latter period he was Visiting Lecturer at Goshen College. He was an assistant editor of the Mennonite Encyclopedia, 1947-59, responsible for the former Austro-Hungarian territories and the Hutterian Brethren. Since 1945 he has been Professor of History and Philosophy at Western Michigan University at Kalamazoo, Michigan, and is an Associate Editor of the Mennonite Quarterly Review.