In 1534, a group of radical Anabaptists seized the Westphalian city of Münster and announced the New Jerusalem - an early attempt at what can best be described as a socialist paradise: private property was abolished, goods were to be held in common, money was condemned. The saints, they said, would live as equals while they awaited the end of the world. It ended it a predictable disaster. Their first leader, Jan Matthys, was killed in a skirmish with Münster's expelled prince-bishop, and was dismembered, his head stuck on a pike and his genitals were nailed to the city door. Undeterred, Jan van Leiden took control of the city and had himself crowned king. Polygamy was imposed. Dissenters were executed. While the city starved under siege, the new king kept a court, fine clothes and multiple wives. Communal ownership applied to the flock. Luxury remained a privilege of the elect. In June 1535 the prince-bishop’s forces returned and this time Catholic authority was returned - with the usual finality of a reconquered city. Van Leiden and his chief lieutenants, Bernhard Knipperdolling and Bernhard Krechting, were tortured and put to death. Their bodies were placed in iron cages and hung from the tower of St. Lambert’s Church as a warning. The cages still hang on the church today, empty now, but unmistakable. Münster is mostly remembered as a religious frenzy, but it was also an early experiment in forced community of goods - and the usual side effect where the language of sharing comes with concentration of power and a ruler who exempts himself from the austerity imposed on everyone else. The bodies in the cages were meant to teach a theological lesson, but they should also remind us of how utopian egalitarianism always ends in tragedy.