Sample collection on women migrants at Unitätsarchiv der Evangelischen Brüder-Unität Herrnhut below
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Collection: Diarium von Erdmuth von Zinzendorf | Diary of Erdmuth von Zinzendorf (Germany, the Netherlands: 1736)
Description: Diary of Erdmuth Dorothea von Zinzendorf (1700–1756) during her journey to the Netherlands in March–April 1736, together with her husband, Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, their eldest daughter Henriette Benigna Justine and a retinue of companions and servants. The Zinzendorfs had invited German-speaking religious refugees from Moravia and Bohemia to settle on their estates in 1722. This settlement, Herrnhut, rapidly grew into the centre of the Moravian Church (the Unity of the Brethren), and the first Protestant missionary movement began in Herrnhut in the 1730s, with missionaries travelling to the Danish-controlled island of St Thomas in the Caribbean in 1732 and Greenland in 1733. The Zinzendorfs were deeply religious and heavily involved in this movement, with Erdmuth playing a key role after Nikolaus was exiled from Saxony for his activities, not long after the period described in the diary. Nikulaus and their daughter Benigna sailed to the Netherlands, America and England during this period of exile but were eventually able to return to Saxony.
Archive address: Zittauer Straße 24, 02747 Herrnhut, Deutschland
Reference number: R.20.B.9.1
Links: Access the archive’s website HERE.
Publication: P. M. Peucker. “Das Diarium von Nikolaus Ludwig Graf von Zinzendorf, geschrieben während seiner Reise durch die Niederlande 1736.” Nederlands archief voor kerkgeschiedenis/Dutch Review of Church History 74.1 (1994): 72–122. Access HERE.
Contributor: Katelin Parsons
