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The Amish Movement was founded by Jacob Amman in Sainte Marie-aux-Mines in 1693, This community is known for its very austere way of life and for having elevated the handicraft of patchwork into an art.

Jacob Amann, known as the "Patriarch", was born in 1644 in Erlenbach in the Simmental (Canton of Bern). After living for a while in the region of Steffisburg, he decided in 1693 to move to Alsace where he seems to have first settled in Heidolsheim.
He set out to encourage the "Brothers" of Alsace to adopt greater rigour in their religious practice and discipline, and to follow a simpler way of life. Due to his strong personality, he soon came into conflict with the old Anabaptist community of Sainte Marie-aux-Mines, and later with those of Switzerland and the Palatinate, which eventually led to a break-up. He settled with his followers in the valley of Sainte Marie-aux-Mines. He himself lived in La Petite-Lièpvre where he is believed to have worked as a tailor. In 1712, he left the valley, as he too was affected by the order of Louis XIV, and moved to a place not far from Zellwiller, near Barr. All trace of him is lost at this point. According to his daughter, he died before 1730.

The Amish people are a religious order which, like any other, is based on rules, the Ordnung. The Ordnung governs all details of ordinary life, from birth to death. Emphasis is laid on simple faith : to follow Jesus in everyday life, in other words, to renounce worldly pleasures, to relinquish ambitions of playing a role in the world, to learn how to bear the ordeals of life with patience and to place all hope in the "other world". The Amish philosophy of life is close to stoicism ; in its religious aspect, it is a quietism tinted by piety. In a manner very close to monastic pessimism, the Amish people believe that for them, the only way to put the teachings of Christ into practice is by living in a community and to try and avoid the bad influences of the modern world by living apart.

The Amish today

All the futurologists who predicted twenty years ago that the Amish would disappear in the American "melting pot" were mistaken. Paradoxically, as the modern world became increasingly "inhuman", a growing number of dissidents abandoned it to join the order. In the United States, the Amish Movement is not threatened by extinction although no one can say in what form the community will survive.

To escape from the influence of this world and this erea, the Amish people realized that anything that does not, in the final analysis, depend upon ourselves, is of little importance. Having renounced the illusive concepts of free-will, emotionalism and activity, they content themselves with being born there where God has placed them, within their ethnic group, and to live and die there with the greatest humility possible. We can trust them, for with them, eternal order will only have been disturbed momentarily.

(Excerpts published by the Anabaptist Mennonite Historical Association, Sainte Marie-aux-Mines).