The small Saxon town of Herrnhut close to the German-Polish border has been recognized as a World Heritage Site, along with two other Moravian settlements planted from Herrnhut in the 18th century in Northern Ireland and Pennsylvania, USA.
This was announced on July 26 at the meeting of the UN Educational, Scientific, Cultural and Communication Organization (UNESCO) committee in New Delhi, India (UNESCO World Heritage Convention).
The recognition was an extension of the World Heritage Site status already granted in 2015 to the Moravian settlement of Christiansfeld near Kolding in Denmark (1773) to include the transnational network of Moravian Church Settlements of Herrnhut (1722), Bethlehem in Pennsylvania, USA (1741), and of Gracehill in Northern Ireland (1759).
Herrnhut itself was established by refugees fleeing from the Catholic Counter-Reformation in Bohemia and Moravia, in what is now the Czech Republic. As spiritual followers of the Prague reformer, Jan Hus, who was martyred in 1415, they consider themselves the first truly Protestant church, predating Luther.
Under the inspirational leadership of Count Nicolas Ludwig Von Zinzendorf, landlord of the estate on which the refugees settled, the Herrnhut community began sending out missionaries in 1732, six decades before the Baptist missionary pioneer, William Carey, went to India.
Zinzendorf would instruct those being sent to be “the sort of persons that would make others ask, ‘what sort of God makes people like you?’” When he died in 1760, the Moravians had sent out more missionaries than all other Protestant churches combined: to Greenland, Lapland, Georgia in America, the Caribbean, Suriname, South Africa, India and many other places.
Outstanding Universal Value
Wherever they settled, the Moravians established mission communities, expressing servanthood and unity in their corporate lifestyle and holding regular love feasts and footwashing ceremonies. Pioneering ecumenism, they adopted the motto: “In essentials unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things charity”.
Each of the newly recognized World Heritage Sites reflects the architecture and town planning of Herrnhut. In Christiansfeld, for example, the streets were laid out in a grid pattern as in Herrnhut and lined with linden trees, transported from the Netherlands. Their meeting halls for worship and prayer had totally white-painted interiors, a hallmark of all the Moravian communities.
While UNESCO would not be expected to recognize Herrnhut’s central role in catalyzing the modern Protestant missionary movement, its website explains that a World Heritage Site is a cultural and/or natural site having “Outstanding Universal Value” (OUV). A World Heritage Site embodies cultural and/or natural significance which is so exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and "to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity" (UNESCO WHC)
UNESCO lists ten possible criteria of which the Moravian Church Settlements nomination utilized the following:
(iii) to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared.
(iv) to be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history.
Each settlement has its own architectural character based on ideals of the Moravian Church but adapted to local conditions.
UNESCO WHC
The UNESCO website explains that each Moravian settlement had its own architectural character based on ideals of the Moravian Church but adapted to local conditions. Together, they represented the transnational scope and consistency of the international Moravian community as a global network of a socio-religious system which, unusually for its time, was highly tolerant. There was an active congregation present in each component part, where traditions were continued and constituted a living Moravian heritage.
The President of the German UNESCO Commission, Maria Böhmer, described the transnational World Heritage Site as a ‘strong sign’, symbolizing cultural and spiritual exchange across national borders and continents. “I hope that this special World Heritage Site will continue to have a unifying effect for a long time to come” (UNESCO Deutsche)
Blessing the world
In the title of a small book I compiled in 2007, I called Herrnhut ‘the little town that blessed the world’, telling about its pivotal role in sending out missionaries and inspiring the ministries of others like John Wesley and William Carey. The book was presented at the Festival of the Nations that year when hundreds of YWAMers from across Europe converged on the town where for the last two decades many more hundreds of young missionaries have been trained in the YWAM centre near the township, the Wasserschloss castle.
Herrnhut has been a regular weekend stopover on the Continental Heritage Tours my wife Romkje and I have led since 2005 through Germany on to the Czech Republic following the trail of ‘faithful minorities’ who have shaped Europe’s story. It links Cyril and Methodius, the apostles to the Slavic peoples in Central Europe, to Jan Hus, Jan Amos Comenius (bishop of the Ancient Moravian Church, philosopher and pedagogue) and to Zinzendorf, Wesley and Carey.
Perhaps one day the transnational heritage site will be furthered expanded to include other Moravian communities, such as Königsveld in Germany’s Black Forest, or Zeist in the Netherlands, where the first Moravian global missions conference was held.
Weekly Word is an initiative of The Schuman Centre for European Studies. Jeff Fountain is a New Zealander holding a Dutch passport, is currently the director of the Schuman Centre for European Studies (www.schumancentre.eu), and lives in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Jeff graduated with a history degree from the University of Auckland (1972) and worked as a journalist on the New Zealand Herald (1972-3), and as travelling secretary for Tertiary Student Christian Fellowship (TSCF) (1973). He has lived in the Netherlands since 1975, and has travelled and spoken in almost every European country. For twenty years following the fall of communism, he was the European director for the international and interdenominational mission organisation, Youth With A Mission. He was chairman of the international, trans-denominational movement, Hope for Europe, for which he organised two pan-European congresses in Budapest in 2002 and 2011. In 2010, he established the Schuman Centre for European Studies (www.schumancentre.eu) to promote biblical perspectives on Europe’s past, present and future, to encourage effective engagement in issues facing Europe today.
