Drive west from Iowa City along U.S. Route 6 and the corn gives way, suddenly, to something that looks transplanted from the Rhineland: long sandstone houses draped in grapevines, a working woollen mill, the smell of yeast from a brewery older than most craft labels in the country. This is Amana, and the story of the Germans in Amana, Iowa is unlike any other German settlement in America. They did not come for farmland or factory wages. They came to build a religious utopia, and for seventy-seven years they shared everything they owned.
The Place
Amana sits in Iowa County, about twenty miles southwest of Cedar Rapids, in a broad valley along the Iowa River. It is the largest of seven villages, Amana, East Amana, West Amana, South Amana, High Amana, Middle Amana and Homestead, strung a mile or two apart across roughly 26,000 acres.
The 2020 census counted 472 people in Amana itself, and recent estimates put it near 700. The numbers are small, but the place draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.
What pulls them in is preservation. The seven villages were collectively named a National Historic Landmark on 23 June 1965, and walking their main streets still feels like stepping into a nineteenth-century German Pietist commune that simply never tore itself down.
How It Became German
A faith born in Hesse
The Amana story begins not in Iowa but in the German principality of Hesse in 1714, when two mystics, Johann Friedrich Rock and Eberhard Ludwig Gruber, founded a Pietist movement called the Community of True Inspiration. Its members believed that God still spoke directly through inspired individuals, much as the prophets of the Old Testament had been moved to speak.
The community faded after Rock died in 1749, then revived in 1817 under a new leader, Christian Metz, working alongside the gifted instrument of inspiration Barbara Heinemann. By then it had become centred mainly in Württemberg and the surrounding German states.
The Inspirationists were difficult subjects for any nineteenth-century German government. They refused military service, would not swear state-required oaths, and insisted on educating their own children in their own faith. For that they were fined, imprisoned and at times publicly beaten.
Across the water to Ebenezer
Persecution and a wider economic depression pushed the community to look across the Atlantic. In 1842 Christian Metz interpreted a divine instruction to lead the faithful to America, and between 1843 and 1844 around 1,200 followers emigrated.
They first settled near Buffalo, New York, on land they called Ebenezer, where they organised themselves as the communal Ebenezer Society. It was here, in the woods of upstate New York, that the Inspirationists first formalised what would define them for generations: the decision to hold all property in common, pooling land, labour and earnings.
Buffalo, however, was growing fast, and the expanding city pressed against the community’s borders and its desire for separation. The leaders looked west.
The move to Iowa
In 1855 the community began relocating to a quiet river valley in Iowa County, Iowa, where they had purchased a large tract of land. They named their first village Amana, a word drawn from the Song of Solomon meaning to remain true.
Six villages went up in close succession, each laid out around a meeting house, a communal kitchen and the workshops that kept the colony self-sufficient. A seventh, Homestead, was bought in 1861 specifically because it sat on the railroad, giving the colonies a connection to the wider world for shipping goods.
The holdings grew to some 26,000 acres of farmland, timber and pasture. Everything within them was owned by the Amana Society, the corporate body of the church.
Seventy-seven years of common life
Daily life under the communal system was tightly ordered and, by the standards of the outside world, almost without private property. Members were assigned work by the Society. Families lived in Society-owned houses and ate in communal kitchens, where village women cooked and served meals in shifts to dozens of people at a time.
Each person received credit at the village store rather than cash. Medical care, housing, schooling and food were all provided by the community. Church was central, held many times a week, with men and women seated separately and the congregation organised by spiritual standing.
The system worked because the colonies produced almost everything they needed and sold the surplus. Amana woollens, calico cloth, furniture, flour and meat earned a strong reputation across the Midwest, and the income flowed back into the common treasury.
The Great Change
By the early 1930s the communal model was straining. A devastating factory fire in 1923 had cost the colonies a fortune because they carried no insurance, and the Great Depression squeezed their markets. Younger members increasingly chafed against a system that left little room for individual ambition.
On 2 February 1932, the membership voted. By an overwhelming margin, reported at about 96 per cent, they approved a plan to separate the church from the economy. Residents still call it the Great Change.
The old non-profit Society was split in two. The Amana Church Society kept the churches and cemeteries, while a new joint-stock company, the Amana Society Inc., took ownership of the land and industries. Members received shares of stock, and many traded those shares for the houses they already lived in. For the first time in their American lives, the people of Amana began to earn wages, keep their own money and choose their own work.
The Landmarks
Amana Heritage Museum, 705 44th Avenue, Amana. Run by the Amana Heritage Society, the museum interprets life from the 1700s through to today with a focus on the communal era of 1855 to 1932. Its complex includes a communal kitchen, a cooper shop, a blacksmith shop and a research library, and it remains the single best place to understand how the colony actually functioned.
Amana Woolen Mill. The mill is the last operating woollen mill in Iowa, and a direct descendant of the communal-era textile works whose blankets and cloth made the colony’s name. Visitors can still watch wool being woven on the premises, the trade that once helped underwrite the whole common treasury.
Millstream Brewing Company, 835 48th Avenue, Amana. Founded in the autumn of 1985 by locals Carroll Zuber and brothers James and Dennis Roemig, Millstream was Iowa’s first modern craft brewery and is among the oldest in the United States. It revived a brewing tradition that had run through the colonies since their founding, and on a given day it keeps more than twenty beers and sodas in production.
Ronneburg Restaurant, 4408 220th Trail, Amana. Named for Ronneburg Castle in Hesse, where many Inspirationists once sheltered, the restaurant serves the family-style German meals the colonies are famous for: bowls of sauerkraut, pickled ham, fried chicken and dumplings passed around the table. The name keeps the German homeland present in the dining room.
Ox Yoke Inn, 4420 220th Trail, Amana. One of the colonies’ oldest restaurants, the Ox Yoke has served communal-style German dinners since the years after the Great Change, when Amana families first began running businesses of their own. It remains a fixture of the village’s main street.
Ackerman Winery, 4406 220th Trail, Amana. Iowa wineries trace much of their fruit-wine tradition to Amana, where households once pressed wine from rhubarb, dandelion and grapes grown on the vines that still climb the colony’s sandstone walls. Ackerman carries that local fruit-wine heritage into the present.
Amana General Store, Amana. The communal-era store, where members once drew goods on credit rather than cash, still anchors the village’s main street and now houses, among other things, the colonies’ Christmas market. It is the most photographed building in Amana for good reason: it is a working link to the world before 1932.
Where They Came From
The people of Amana came overwhelmingly from the German-speaking states of central and southwestern Germany. Hesse was the spiritual cradle, the place where the Community of True Inspiration was founded in 1714 and where the Ronneburg sheltered believers.
By the time of the great emigration the movement was centred mainly in Württemberg, and census records from the colonies’ early years also show settlers born in Saxony and Bavaria. They were, in other words, not a single regional clan but a faith community gathered from across Germany and bound by belief rather than birthplace.
What united them was the decision to leave together. They were not chasing land or wages but fleeing fines, jail and conscription, and seeking a corner of the world where they could live and worship as they chose. Iowa, remote and fertile, gave them exactly that distance.
Amana Today
Amana today lives a double life. It is a small working town of a few hundred people, many of them descendants of the original Inspirationists, and at the same time one of Iowa’s most visited heritage destinations.
The industries that survived the Great Change still shape the place. Amana Refrigeration, founded by colony native George Foerstner and later producing the first practical commercial microwave oven in 1967, grew into a major appliance brand now owned by Whirlpool, and its plant remains a significant local employer. The woollen mill, the furniture shop, the winery and the brewery keep older crafts alive for visitors and locals alike.
The German inheritance is loudest each autumn at Oktoberfest, the oldest such celebration in Iowa and among the oldest in the country, with polka bands, bratwurst and a costumed Burgermeister leading the keg-tapping parade through the museum courtyard. The faith that began the whole story endures too: the Amana Church Society still holds services in the plain meeting houses, a quiet continuation of the Community of True Inspiration more than three centuries after it began.
The German diaspora in the American Midwest is wide and deep, from the Volga German farming families who settled around German Catholic communities like St. Cloud, Minnesota to the Rhinelanders who built Belleville, Illinois and the Hill Country settlers of Fredericksburg, Texas. It reaches even into the cities, to the tenement world of Little Germany in Manhattan. Amana is the same migration’s most radical experiment, and it sits among Iowa’s other faith-built immigrant towns, the Dutch Calvinists of Pella and Orange City, who came west with much the same hope of building a community on their own terms.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are the Germans in Amana, Iowa so unusual among German settlements?
The Germans in Amana, Iowa were not ordinary economic migrants but members of a single Pietist faith, the Community of True Inspiration, who chose to hold all property in common. For seventy-seven years, from 1855 to 1932, they shared land, housing, food and labour rather than owning anything individually. No other German settlement in America organised itself quite this way.
When did Germans first settle in Amana?
The community began building the village of Amana in 1855, after relocating from an earlier settlement called Ebenezer near Buffalo, New York. The Inspirationists had emigrated from Germany between 1843 and 1844, about 1,200 of them, before moving west to Iowa.
What was the Great Change?
The Great Change is what Amana residents still call the end of communal living. On 2 February 1932, around 96 per cent of members voted to separate the church from the economy, splitting the old Society into the Amana Church Society and the for-profit Amana Society Inc. From then on, people earned wages and owned their own homes.
Where in Germany did the Amana settlers come from?
The Germans in Amana, Iowa traced their faith to Hesse, where the Community of True Inspiration was founded in 1714, and by the time of emigration the movement was centred mainly in Württemberg. Early census records also show settlers born in Saxony and Bavaria, so the colony drew from across the German-speaking states.
Can you still see the German heritage in Amana today?
Yes. The seven villages were named a National Historic Landmark in 1965, and the woollen mill, communal-era buildings, German restaurants, winery and brewery are all open to visitors. The Amana Church Society still holds services, and the annual Oktoberfest is the oldest in Iowa.
Is Amana connected to the Amana appliance brand?
Yes. Amana Refrigeration was founded by colony native George Foerstner and grew out of the community around the time of the Great Change. The company produced the first practical commercial microwave oven in 1967 and is now owned by Whirlpool, with operations still based near the colonies.
If your family’s story passed through Amana, or any of the places Germans have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the Pietist meeting houses of Hesse and Württemberg, to a sandstone village on the Iowa River, to wherever you are now.