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In the winter of 1817, a caravan of half-starved Swabians crossed through miles of frozen forests to find their promised land: Ohio. In accordance with their egalitarian ethos and inspired by apocalyptic prophecy, these men and women rejected private ownership and held all things in common. This radical commune, which they called Zoar, would be the most successful intentional community in American history and one of the most enduring socialist experiments, lasting several years longer than even the Soviet Union.
Gladio Free Europe's Ohio correspondent Jern (@realJernfer) returns for another stirring story of the Buckeye state. Founded by Pietist refugees from the German state of Wurttemberg, Zoar put into practice the same kinds of radical ideas discussed previously among the Anabaptists, Quakers, and Shakers. Unlike most other communes, including Robert Owen's enlightenment dream of New Harmony, Zoar was stable and prosperous. Succeeding where so many others failed, the commune held together across multiple generations and even developed an early industrial economy. It attracted the envy and admiration of many other communities, including the controversial free-love society of Oneida.
Zoar saw itself as a refugee from the sinful and venal world outside, taking its name from the town that sheltered the Biblical Lot after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet the community's influence over Ohio trade and finance meant the outside world could not be kept away. Ultimately, Zoar would be a victim of its own success, as its wealthy residents decided to dissolve the commune and divvy up their belongings into private hands.
Despite ultimately failing in its mission to secede from the world of material things, Zoar is an inspiring story of what it looks like to build the New Moral World. And although its founders were sectarian socialists from the Holy Roman Empire, who spoke little English and had even less interest in the broader national project, the undaunted ambition of Zoar makes this small commune a quintessential chapter of American history.