Christian Metz was born on December 30, 1794, in Germany and with his parents removed to Ronneburg, Hesse, at the age of seven. His grandfather, Jakob Metz of Himbach, was a member of one of the early congregations of Inspirationists who traced their origin to the German Mystics and Pietists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The Metz family belonged to the Community of True Inspiration, a Pietist sect founded in 1714 with core beliefs in pacificism, simplicity of worship, and inspired revelations through special inspired leaders known as Werkzeuge (instruments). In about 1800 the Metz family relocated to the Ronneburg Castle, a long-standing place of refuge for Inspirationists. There Metz received a rudimentary education and was apprenticed to a master cabinetmaker.
By the close of the eighteenth century the Community of True Inspiration had suffered a spiritual decline: the founders, Gruber and Rock, were dead, and the gift of inspiration had ceased. But in 1817, when Christian Metz was twenty-three years old, the Community experienced a spiritual awakening and three members were recognized as "endowed with the miraculous gift of Inspiration, " namely, Michael Krausert of Strassburg, Christian Metz of Ronneburg, and Barbara Heinemann of Leitersweiler, Alsace. Soon, however, Krausert "fell back into the world, " temporarily lost the gift of inspiration. Thus spiritual guidance and temporal leadership devolved solely upon Christian Metz, who remained to the time of his death the recognized head of the Community.
Accordingly, with three other brothers, Christian Metz made the voyage to America in 1842 and purchased the Seneca Indian Reservation, a tract of five thousand acres near Buffalo, New York. This site, which he named Ebenezer, was the home of his people until 1854 when he led the brothers westward in search of cheaper and more abundant lands and greater seclusion. A tract of eighteen thousand acres was purchased in the frontier commonwealth of Iowa, and through inspiration Christian Metz christened it Amana.
During the thirteen years of his leadership, Christian Metz successfully organized and molded the community along the lines of his long-cherished hopes and dreams. In 1859 it was incorporated under the laws of Iowa as the Amana Society, with a constitution and by-laws which, with only minor changes, remained its fundamental law until the Reorganization of 1932, by which church and state were separated, ending spiritual authority in temporal affairs.
Christian Metz died at Amana in his seventy-third year and was buried in the cedar-bordered cemetery there.
Christian Metz was a religious leader and founder of what is now known as the Amana Society in Amana, Iowa. His real monument is the Amana Society with its seven villages, its twenty-five thousand acres of land, its mills, factories, and stores, its barns and sheds, orchards, vineyards, and gardens, its homes and schools and churches the most successful experiment in communism in America.
Christian Metz was a religious leader and founder of the Amana Society. The Metz family belonged to the Community of True Inspiration, a Pietist sect founded in 1714 with core beliefs in pacificism, simplicity of worship, and inspired revelations through special inspired leaders known as Werkzeuge (instruments).
Christian Metz was a man of profound piety and great sincerity, a successful organizer, and an executive of unusual ability. He was who first conceived the idea of leasing estates in common as a refuge for the faithful; and while the original intention had been to live together simply as a Christian congregation or church, he foresaw that a system of communism would be the natural development of the mode of life which his people had been forced to adopt. He foresaw, also, that exorbitant rents and unfriendly governments would one day require them to seek a home in the New World.
Christian Metz is remembered as a man of commanding presence and of great personal magnetism whose natural dignity and spiritual poise challenged admiration and respect everywhere. His voluminous writings, collected and preserved in the archives of the Community, reveal a penetrating mind, an earnest, eager spirit, unusual patience with human frailties, toleration and a fine sense of justice in dealing with men and measures, a practical philosophy of life, a genuine feeling of humility, and a deep sense of the responsibility of his high office.
In 1823, Christian Metz married Barbara Heinemann.
