Popitz, a parish village southwest of Auspitz in Moravia, in which the Hutterites had a Bruderhof on the lands of the barons of Lomnice in 1537. In the great persecution of 1570 the Brethren had to flee and concealed themselves in holes and caves, the lochy. The Polau Mountains, es­pecially Mount Maydenberg (Mayberg) near Popitz, offered possibilities for hiding. The Hutterite Chron­icle records that especially around the Mayberg they had in many places pits and holes concealed in clumps of bushes, in which they with their children lived for a time, also "in the clefts of the rocks in the valley and in the high rocks of the Mayberg, the same at other places in the country, wherever they could." At Popitz the authorities were about to smoke them out of the caves, but were prevented. In their former Bruderhof the householder Gabriel Aichhorn died in 1551. But they did not really begin to live there again until 1573. In 1599 the deacon Thomas Pruckner died in the Popitz Bruderhof. The Thurn cavalry did much damage in 1600. Popitz is not named among the Bruderhofs aban­doned in 1622.

Bibliography

Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia, and Waterloo, Ontario, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, pp. 202-203. All rights reserved. For information on ordering the encyclopedia visit the Herald Press website.

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