ABSTRACT
The mortality rate for children was very high everywhere in the middle ages but in the Hutterite community it was extremely high. In the Hutterite community the elders and their wives enjoyed various privileges. Those who flattered them got wine and other foods from the steward or his assistants and brought it to their children - secretly in the early days, and quite openly toward the end of the ‘Golden Age’ of the Hutterites. Christoph Fischer, who as a Jesuit was certainly guilty of extreme partisan prejudice against the Hutterites, was nevertheless right to reproach them for the weaknesses of their school system: Only the perverted Anabaptists act against nature’. If a panic broke out due to the death of a great number of children, many parents would rush to the schools to remove their children despite the vehement resistance of the elders.
