Von der Weltmission zurück in die Ortsgemeine?

Probleme und Perspektiven der Brüdergemeine im Ersten Weltkrieg

Abstract

The German Moravian Church’s difficulties during the First World War are discussed using six case studies. The first of these recounts the break-up of the international Mission Board, the Herrnhut-based central governing board in charge of supervising the Unity’s joint missionary efforts. After the outbreak of the war, the board was caught up in a dispute between the German and British Unity provinces. In particular Paul Hennig, the board’s elected chairman, drew strong criticism for his German nationalist stance. Consequently, Hennig gave up on his pre-war vision of joint international ‘world mission’ and pivoted back, at least temporarily, to an introverted national reorientation of missionary affairs. On a different level, the following two case studies portray the wartime difficulties of navigating between national culture, supranational unity and those circumstances peculiar to a transnational mission community like the Moravian Church: the ‘humiliating’ experiences of the children of German missionaries (Missionskinder) who, having been born overseas, lacked German citizenship; and the case made against the ‘foreigner’ Mads Hansen Löbner by the Christiansfeld Elders’ Conference in 1916. None the less, the name of Löbner also testifies to the Moravian Church’s general ‘discursive openness’ (Hedwig Richter), as his signature would subsequently appear under the call for the creation of a Moravian peace association that was published in the Herrnhut weekly in 1917. These three ‘problem studies’ are complemented by three case studies that present counter measures, as well as attempts at retaining agency and offering new perspectives out of wartime strains: the ‘Back to the Settlement Congregation’ campaign launched by the German Provincial Board in 1918, emerging educational perspectives for Moravian women, and the efforts to revitalize a Moravian youth movement halted by the war. The picture of the German Moravian Church during the First World War that is painted in the article is thus one of difficulties, stagnation and efforts that had little impact in the short term. In the longer view, though, the attempts at reorientation and rebuilding momentum, both by rediscovering the founding times and by moving with the times, are not to be underestimated. Herrnhut’s place, it can be argued, was thereby transposed from international hub to Moravian ‘home of the soul’ (Seelenheimat).