Based on hundreds of archival documents, Christina Petterson offers an in-depth analysis of the community building process and individual and collective subjectification practices of the Moravian Brethren in eighteenth-century Herrnhut, Eastern Germany, between 1740 and 1760.
The Moravian Brethren are a Protestant group, but Petterson demonstrates the relevance of their social experiments and practices for early modernity by drawing out the socio-economic layers of the archival material. In doing so, she provides a non-religious reading of categories that became central to liberal ideology, corresponding to the Moravian negotiation of the transition from feudal society to early capitalism.
Publication date: September 13, 2022
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introductions
1 To the Marxists
2 To Moravian Scholars and Other Theologians
3 Outline of Chapters
1 Introducing Choir Ideology
1 Introduction
2 From Choir Speech to Choir Ideology
3 What Is the Function of a Choir?
4 Methodology
5 The Choirs as Vanishing Mediators
2 The Choirs – A Genealogy
1 Introduction
2 Overview of the Genealogy
3 Terminology and the Establishment of the Choirs
4 The Day of All Choirs: 25 March
5 Choir Houses
6 Conclusion
3 Blood, Wounds, and Class
1 Introduction
2 Martin Dober’s Account
3 The Purge in Herrnhut
4 Blood, Wounds, and Authority
5 Conclusion
4 The Choir Speeches
1 Introduction
2 The Saviour, Individual and Collective
3 Children’s Choir
4 Boys’ Choir
5 Girls’ Choir
6 Single Brothers’ Choir
7 Single Sisters’ Choir
8 Widowers’ Choir
9 Widows’ Choir
10 Conclusion
5 Marriage and Community
1 Zinzendorf’s Idea of Marriage
2 The Problem
3 After the Synod
4 Conclusion
6 The State and Its Subjects
1 Stand as Manifestation of Cultural Revolution
2 Gender
3 Class Society and the Civic Self
4 Individual and Subject
5 The Question of Religion
6 Conclusion
7 Horizons of History
1 Times of Change
2 Agents of Change or Expressions of Change
3 Dimensions of History
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
References
Index
