Mährische Exulanten in der erneuerten Brüderunität im 18. Jahrhundert by Edita Sterik (review)

In this volume Edita Sterik tells the history of worldwide Unitas Fratrum from the perspective of the 475 people who illegally immigrated to the Zinzendorf estates in Saxony from 1722 to 1755. Much of what she says about the founding of Herrnhut by the first emigrants in 1722, the signing of the Brotherly Agreement by the residents of Herrnhut in 1727, and the sending of some of the Moravians as missionaries to St. Thomas, Greenland, and South Africa is familiar to the readers of Journal of Moravian History, but her exclusive perspective on the Moravians is refreshing. Zinzendorf fades to the background, and the Moravians have center stage in Sterik's account of the early history. This provides a welcome corrective to over a century of Moravian historiography that treats the Moravians as an extension of Zinzendorf.

Sterik also investigates some aspects of early Moravian history that are not well known in English-language scholarship, such as the evangelistic work in Moravia that inspired so many people to flee Habsburg dominion and the frequent conflict between the Moravians and Zinzendorf over whether the erneuerte Brüderunität (renewed Moravian Church) represented the resurrection of the Unitas Fratrum as an independent church or if it was some type of religious society within the established church. According to Sterik, the Moravians played an active role in the shaping of the Brüderunität and its global mission. Most of the early leaders of the Brüderunität and early missionaries were Moravians who had left their homeland singing hymns written during the Czech Reformation. She also provides the details of the first attempt to found a second Herrnhut-type community, called Pilgerruh, in the 1730s. The Moravians received permission to found a community in Holstein that would have some independence from the local ecclesiastical authorities, but the experiment failed dramatically because of internal and external conflict. The Moravian community in Georgia, which was established around the same time, also failed, but Sterik does not provide a comparison of them. Nor does she investigate how later, more successful ventures like Bethlehem and Christiansfeld differed from Pilgerruh.

Sterik provides a long and very detailed study of the Moravians that includes visual and written portraits of the most important Moravian exiles. She relies almost exclusively on archival material and quotes liberally from manuscript sources so that much of the history is told in the words of the participants. This is an impressive example of positivist historiography that will be of use to anyone researching Herrnhut and the early Moravian mission. However, the book is lacking an introduction that sets forth the thesis, explains the methodology employed, and places this study in a larger context within Moravian historiography. Although Sterik uses critical judgment in her handling of the sometimes-contradictory accounts in the original documents, her study would benefit from more analysis of the history she recounts. At times the exclusive focus on the Moravians may distort or obscure the historical narrative. For instance, the Moravians played important, even heroic roles, in the Caribbean mission, but as Jon Sensbach has shown, one of the most important things they did was encourage converts to work alongside them as missionaries. Also, her account of Herrnhaag and the so-called Sichtungszeit (Sifting Time) could benefit from some of the more recent analysis of Herrnhaag by Paul Peucker and others. The contrast between the strict Moravians and the antinomian radical German Pietists is drawn too sharply. For instance, Moravian bishop Johannes Nitschmann was considered a representative of Herrnhaag enthusiasm by the radical Pietist August Gottlieb Spangenberg, who called for a return to moral rigor.

Despite some of the limitations of its methodology, Mährische Exulanten in der erneuerten Brüderunität im 18. Jahrhundert is a very valuable addition to modern Moravian historiography. It provides a wealth of original source material that illuminates...