Short Biography
Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf was born on May 26, 1700. The only child of George Ludwig and Charlotte Justine Von Zinzendorf, he was the 22nd generation of one of the oldest aristocratic families in Europe. His birth was recorded by his mother in the family Bible. She noted “gift of my first-born son, Nicolaus Ludwig,” asking “the Father of mercy” to “govern the heart of this child that he may walk blamelessly in the path of virtue … may his path be fortified in his Word” (Christianity Today n.d.). He grew up with his grandmother, Henriette Catharina von Gersdorff.
Zinzendorf attended the school run by the influential August Hermann Francke (1663-1727) at Halle, Germany. In 1715 he pledged his life to Christ and in 1716 he, along with some school friends founded “The Order of the Grain of Mustard Seed.” The society was some kind of spiritual order of knighthood for the service to God and not for personal honor.
Zinzendorf studied law at the University of Wittenberg from 1716-1721. During his one-year Grand Tour around Europe, Zinzendorf had an almost mystical experience of the Savior. This made him resolve to use his life and position to spread the gospel.
On his 21st birthday, Zinzendorf purchased the estate of Berthelsdorf from his grandmother and constructed a manor house there. He also assumed his role as Count of the Holy Roman Empire assuming new duties as an official of the court of the Saxon King August The Strong in Dresden. He married Erdmuthe Dorothea von Reuss in 1722.
In 1722, Zinzendorf, through the plea of a young Silesian carpenter named Christian David, allowed the Moravian refugees to stay in his Berthelsdorf estate. Together the group built the tiny village of Herrnhut which means “The Lord’s Watch.” This was the start of the Moravian movement (Tucker 2011. 246).
One of Zinzendorf’s convictions is the centrality of the Lord’s Supper during the worship. He believed that there was ‘no congregation without communion’ (Randall 2006, 209). On August 13, 1727, the Herrnhut community held a special service of Holy Communion. It would become a symbol of both repentance and reconciliation for the Herrnhutters. During this worship service they felt the presence of God in a special way (Ryoo 2008, 40). Many of them would describe it later as the time they learned to love one another. After that experience, the people continued to talk about their experience. Zinzendorf watched them praying and singing, laughing and crying and eating together. This love feast, a simple meal in Christian Fellowship in the context of prayer and singing has become a beloved Moravian custom which has endured through the years.
Zinzendorf later found out that the Unitas Fratrum had a very large Protestant movement that predated the Lutheran Reformation. He took this as a confirmation of God’s guidance in the creation of the Herrnhut community. He then intensified his efforts to organize the community along spiritual lines. They created Bands who would meet regularly for prayer and Bible Study (Randall 2006, 207). While the bands were intimate support groups the entire community was also organized by age, gender and marital status into larger groups called choirs.
After the revival of 1727 there was a sense that the Moravian community was called to a particular mission. One of the things Count Zinzendorf did was to try to focus that mission in common Bible study and prayer. In 1728 Zinzendorf began to draw up a list of Bible texts that would guide the community in its daily devotions and study and so on. The revival also resulted in the creation of an ongoing 24 hour a day prayer watch.
Childhood Influence
Both the Zinzendorf and Gersdorf families were strong participants of Pietism, a Lutheran movement which sought to restore emotional warmth to the increasingly philosophical and intellectual Lutheran Church. As a young boy, he cherished Lutheran doctrine and sacraments. He liked meditating on Christ’s sacrifices. His life motto was “I have one passion: it is Jesus, Jesus only.” His special devotion to Christ in a child-like manner largely shaped the Moravian theology (Burns n.d.).
Vision/Passion/Dream/Goals
Zinzendorf was a visionary, idealist, the dreamer, and the theoretician. He built up a denomination that was passionate about missions. One of the controversies against Zinzendorf was that he was only sending his followers to die on the field. To disprove this, he decided to go to St. Thomas and showed to his detractors that he was willing to die as well. He prepared his last will and testament and gave his last sermon to support his claim. He was fully prepared to not return from his trip.
The Moravians had sent out no less than 226 missionaries and had seen a total of over 3,000 converts baptized by the time of Zinzendorf’s death (Christianity Today n.d.). Even then, the powerful missionary work continued expanding into new areas. But as the 18th century ended and the 19th began Zinzendorf’s emphasis on training indigenous leadership was lost only to be revisited near the end of the 20th century.
People Who Influenced Him
His father died of tuberculosis only a few weeks after his birth. When his mother remarried, Zinzendorf lived with his grandmother, Henriette Catharina von Gersdorff, where he got the strong influence of his faith and where he developed a strong living faith relationship with the Savior.
He was surrounded by people who supported him with practical skills in administration and management. Part of his team was Bishop Auguste Gottlieb Spangenberg who became the Count’s right hand and was the administrator of the Moravian movement.
Another member of the Count’s team was Baron Frederick von Watteville who was a good friend during his school years. The Baron accompanied him into exile and was part of the entourage known as the pilgrim congregation. The congregation sought refuge from the Count of Isenberg in Wetterau and used a partially ruined castle. There Zinzendorf created a new community, Herrnhaag, named after the nearby Hagg Church. They started building Herrnhaag in 1738 and within a few years they had around a thousand people living there.
His first wife, Erdmuthe, was also a skilled manager. When the controversies about him started and long before the banishment
was handed down, he had already sold his estates to his wife. This saved the
Herrnhut property and his finances.
Problem or situation that called for him to act upon and contribute change
The Berthelsdorf estate lay just across the border from Moravia and Bohemia. Three centuries earlier, John Hus, a Bohemian priest was burned at stake for opposing the Roman Catholic Church. His followers formed the Hussite Unity of the Brethren (Unitas Fratrum) in 1457. When the Reformation grew in Northern Europe a thirty-year war ensued with the Moravians caught in the middle. During this time the members of the Unity went underground. Of this group came refugees who crossed the border into Eastern Germany. In 1722, he accepted Moravian refugees and housed them in his Berthelsdorf estate.
The Moravians belonged to a very distinct and very old Protestant tradition. However, they could not worship legally outside the structure of the German Lutheran Church. Zinzendorf solved this by hiring Johann Andreas Rothe, a dynamic young Lutheran pastor to fill the pulpit at Berthelsdorf.
Meanwhile, Christian David traveled frequently to Moravia to recruit other brethren to move to Herrnhut. He was a powerful preacher, so he was able to attract non-Moravians as well - German Pietists, Lutherans, Reformed, Separatists, Anabaptists, and other religious enthusiasts (Burns n.d.). These people felt they could not live out their faith in another place and decided to move and settle in Herrnhut. However, this mixture of people resulted in chaos.
Because of the chaos, Zinzendorf was forced to leave his responsibility at the court to restore peace and order in his property. He began to work on a one-on-one basis with the people in Herrnhut. He gathered the men of the community together for daily bible study and prayer. Together they discussed basic life questions of how a Christian should behave in a community. They also began to compile Bible verses on Christian behavior.
Zinzendorf acted as the Overseer of Herrnhut. He represented the community to the outside world. Inside the community, the residents were free and were protected by Zinzendorf.
The seed of Moravian mission was planted when the count was invited to attend the coronation of King Christian the 6th of Denmark where he was presented with the order of the Dannebrog, the highest recognition of distinguished service. In that event he met Anthony Ulrich, a slave from St. Thomas (now Virgin Islands), who came to Europe with his master. While on that trip, he was able to attend a church and was converted to the Christian faith. His conversion led him to wish the same for his brothers and sisters back in St. Thomas. When Anthony met Zinzendorf, he expressed his hope for the gospel to be brought to his island.
Zinzendorf relayed his encounter with Anthony to the Herrnhut community. As a result, Leonard Dober and David Nitschmann felt God’s call for them to go to St. Thomas. They were sent out in 1732.
In 1733, Zinzendorf decided to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a Lutheran minister. He underwent screening from the faculty of the University of Tubingen. In 1735 Zinzendorf was ordained as a Lutheran minister (Christianity Today n.d.).
In 1735 three missionaries were sent to South America to begin work in Suriname. As missionaries, they followed Zinzendorf’s instructions to respect the indigenous culture and language (Tucker 2011. 252; Ryoo 2008. 40). They learned the language of the Arawaks and translated parts of the gospel into that language.
The Moravians believed in gentle evangelism, a quiet invitation to those who are ready to believe. Zinzendorf was revolutionary in his missionary thinking. He told his people not to go and preach but to go and live with those in need. Don’t just tell them about Christ, paint a living picture of Christ for them (Tucker 2011. 252).
Many observers were baffled by Zinzendorf’s interest in African slaves and indigenous cultures. To most people in the 18th century other races were lesser beings fit only for domination and exploitation. Yet to Zinzendorf each person mattered. Each was a person for whom the Savior had died (Burns. n.d.).
The mission effort was one of the few truly international interracial movements in the 18th century. The Moravians did not plead for liberty of the slaves. They never talked about the horrors of slavery. What they taught to the slaves, instead, was hard work and loyalty and thus show that they are worthy of freedom. The governors of the provinces where the Moravians worked noticed that the converts did not take part in any revolt (Hutton 1909).
The next missionary undertaking was at the southernmost tip of Africa. The Moravian mission work really started in the Cape of Good Hope in the year 1737 when Count Zinzendorf assigned a German missionary by the name of Georg Schmidt to do missionary work among the indigenous people of the Cape of Good Hope at the time (Hutton 1909).
His contributions as a Change Agent
In a few short years the Moravians had become a benchmark for mission to indigenous peoples. From a tiny village of 600 they had burst into the world - mission stations in Greenland, the American colonies in the Caribbean, South America, South Africa and India (Fogleman 2005).
When the Moravians settled in a place, they settled with the intent of doing this mission work. Communities are set up in such a way that it would fund and support the missions and the missionaries. A general economy, a communal system of living is developed. Tanneries, mills, dye houses, weaving shops, tinsmiths, Saddlers are built. Large number of industries are built. A whole system of craft houses is established which involves apprentices and a more industrial based economy (Ryoo 2008, 45).
The Moravians created vital and dynamic communities that became known throughout the colonies as centers for arts and music. The Moravian settlers in America in the later 18th century brought with them their musical culture from Europe and that meant they brought along their musical skills, their knowledge, their copies of everything they could copy to bring over with them. They crafted the first American built pipe organs, harpsichords and violins. Previously these instruments had always been imported from Europe.
Education too was a major emphasis in all Moravian communities particularly the education of women. This was most unusual in a time when women were regarded almost as property needing little education beyond sewing and other domestic arts. With Zinzendorf in the Christian community, Christians must be co-equal and for Zinzendorf in the 18th century it really is not appropriate to think of one gender being somehow superior or holding a socially superior position.
When Zinzendorf and his daughter, Benigna, first came to the Americas in 1741, she started a school for girls. The girls received comparable education to what the boys received on academic reading, writing language, and arithmetic (Wikipedia. n.d.).
The general position of women in Moravian communities was very unusual for the 18th century. Women’s roles among Moravians were a source of frequent criticism from outside. But the weight of such criticism was now decreasing in Germany. The orderly and productive Moravian communities were their own best defense. In fact, the Moravian way of life was so attractive to other people that King Frederick II (the Great) of Prussia and other leaders eagerly invited the Moravians to set up communities on their lands (Encyclopedia.com n.d.).
Personal Reflections
Zinzendorf transcended thinking of his time from the beginning. He always saw another step or two beyond what most people were seeing. And he had a tremendous gift for helping others to catch that vision also. It was because of that vision that a baker in central Germany could suddenly pack up and move to America because they needed a baker in Bethlehem. He had a marvelous way of communicating his dreams and ideals and having it result in concrete action.
Zinzendorf influence is not concentrated in a single denomination or institution where it might be easier to discern. Rather it is spread as an influence across many denominations and incorporated in the thought of great theologians. Zinzendorf appears today as a visible thread through the fabric of many mission movements and cultures.
It's hard to measure the legacy of Count Zinzendorf. Rather than being visible in a single denomination or institution its spread in a subtle influence through many denominations and countries. The impact of his thought and faith is still felt around the world three centuries after his birth (Tucker 2011, 259). There’s no doubt what questions Zinzendorf himself would like to leave us with today. It's the same question which challenged him as a youth, the crucified Christ asking, “This have I done for you, what will you do for me?”
References
Book
Tucker, Ruth. From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A biographical history of Christian missions. Zondervan, 2004.
Journals
Burns, E.D. n.d. “Moravian Missionary Piety and the Influence of Count Zinzendorf.” Training Leaders International. 1 no. 2
Randall, Ian. 2006. “A Missional Spirituality: Moravian Brethren and eighteenth-century English evangelicalism.” Transformation. 23 no. 4
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/026537880602300404
Ryoo, David Eung-Yul. 2008. The Moravian Missions Strategy: Christ-Centered, Spirit-Driven, Mission-Minded. https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/haddington-house-journal/12_035.pdf
Website Content
Christianity Today. n.d. “Zinzendorf's Chronology.” Accessed September 18, 2021. https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-1/zinzendorfs-chronology.html
Encyclopedia.com. 2018. “Moravian Brethren.” Accessed October 1, 2021. https://www.encyclopedia.com/philosophy-and-religion/christianity/christianity-general/moravian-brethren
Hutton, J. E. 1909. “History of the Moravian Church.” Accessed October 2, 2021. https://www.ccel.org/ccel/hutton/moravian.v.iv.html
Wikipedia. n.d. Benigna Zinzendorf. Accessed October 22, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benigna_Zinzendorf
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