First picture

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Johann Valentin Haidt, first picture in Zeist

As a first-image one of is Johann Valentin Haidt created 1,747 paintings referred that the mission understanding of the Moravian Church of fundamental importance. It is considered to be Haidt's main work. The motif was so popular that Haidt made several copies. The original probably comes from Herrnhaag and was later brought to Zeist . Today it is in the Small Hall of the Brethren there.

Moravian Mission Understanding

Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf was interested in winning over individual people as “ first fruits ” in previously non-Christian peoples for the Christian faith; He did not strive to proselytize entire peoples or states.

The reason for the picture was the news of the death of several "first fruits" in North America. Most of the people portrayed had died in Germany, however, because the missionaries brought "a number of people from Africa, the Caribbean and South India to Germany, where they were assigned the role of living witnesses of the worldwide blessings of Christianity." In the European branches of the Brethren 31 such guests could be identified, including 14 women and men from Saint-Thomas (West Indies), five Greenlanders and one Greenlander, one Persian, one Tartar each, one Armenian, one Ceylonese and one Indian, two Arawaks from Surinam and two Africans from Carolina. Most of them died after two or three years, little is known about their "silent presence" in the Moravian branches.

Haidt's painting “The 24 Sister Choirs” (1751) depicts female representatives from the Moravian women's groups spread across the world; He probably found the motif at the sister choir festival on May 4, 1747 in Herrnhaag , where 24 “virgin elders” from different nations and communities lined up on both sides of an image of Christ. The picture, which is now in the archives of the Herrnhut Brothers Union, shows several non-European women, probably the Persian Catharina Guley, the Greenlander Judith Issek as well as an Indian and an African woman.

Image description

Haidt created the first picture for the synod conference hall; so it is not a devotional picture. An angel hovers above the enthroned Christ, holding a crown of thorns and a scroll with the verse Rev 14,4b  LUT ; he interprets the depicted scene. Contrary to the iconographic tradition, Jesus Christ is not depicted here as a judge of the world, but as a friendly Savior with arms outstretched to invite. The stigmata, especially the wound on the side , which is important for Moravian spirituality , indicate his vicarious suffering, with which he bought redemption according to Christian belief.

Around it, 21 people from all parts of the world, men, women and children, gather to look at the viewer and thus involve them. The depicted persons, first converts of the Moravian Mission, can be seen life-size in their traditional clothing and mostly have individual facial features. The Moravian chronicler David Cranz listed the following names:

Rebekka Protten was an important person in the Moravian missionary history, but was not depicted because she was still alive when Haidt painted the picture.
  1. Sam from Boston, New England;
  2. Samuel Kajarnak from Greenland;
  3. Christina Guley, a Persian;
  4. Thomas, a Huron from Canada;
  5. Catharina, a " mulatto " from Saint-John with
  6. Anna Maria, Rebekka Protten's little daughter ;
  7. Gratia, an African woman;
  8. "A gypsy girl who, after her mother had been shot, was given to the Maegdgen house in Herrnhaag by the counts of Büdingen ";
  9. John, a Mohican , "a teacher among the savages";
  10. Andreas, an African, and
  11. his little son Michael, whom the
  12. African woman holding Anna Maria in her arms;
  13. Carmel Oly, an African slave boy;
  14. Jupiter, an African from New York;
  15. Francesco from Florida;
  16. Kibbodo, a " Hottentott ";
  17. Ruth, "a wild woman" (Mohican);
  18. Christian, an Armenian, child of Christian parents;
  19. Thomas Mammucha, a Mingrelian .

In the tradition of depicting Christian martyrs, all bear palm branches. These stand here for overcoming death. With four adults and four children, the Danish West Indies make up the largest group of people in the picture. They are represented by Haidt in the foreground, at the feet of Christ.

Particularly emphasized is the Mohican Johannes Tschop, who looks at Christ's side wound. Tschop (or Coop) was a teacher and interpreter in the Shekomeko community, New York, and was the model for the figure of Chingachgook in Cooper's novels . In contemporary descriptions, Tschop was certified to have an astonishing external resemblance to Martin Luther , and Haidt implemented this in the first picture.

The two African boys Carmel Oly and Jupiter are in the foreground of the picture. Carmel Oly came from the Kingdom of Loango . He was taken to Saint-Thomas (West Indies) by slave traders . There Moravian missionaries bought the boy free. Leonhard Dober brought him to Ebersdorf, where he was baptized Josua in 1735. He died the following year. Behind the two boys is Immanuel, who was named Andreas at the baptism, a former Creole slave. He learned to read, studied the Bible and after his conversion became an elder of the congregation on Saint-Thomas. He later toured Pennsylvania and Europe, where he died in 1744.

reception

Haidt's strength was the portrait. The art historian Hans Huth judges that the painting is a compilation of individual studies; the artist was not able to integrate his preliminary studies into an overall composition. Nevertheless, it is a separate contribution to Protestant image design.

The motif of the first picture corresponded to Zinzendorf's chiliastic piety at the time and enjoyed great popularity as long as the community lived in anticipation of the near end of the world. Haidt's original first picture existed in duplicate; one copy burned in Herrnhut in May 1945, the other is in the church hall of the Brethren in Zeist . It probably comes from Herrnhaag . Further variants of the picture were made in the following years, the last two in 1754/55 for Bethlehem (Pennsylvania) and Saint-Thomas (West Indies).

A copy of the first picture, which is in the Herrnhut University Archive, was a poster for the exhibition “The Luther Effect” in the German Historical Museum on the occasion of the Reformation anniversary in 2017 .

literature

  • Haidt's Painting of the First Fruits, 1747 . In: Moravian Archives Bethlehem (Ed.): This Month in Moravian History No. 17 (March 2007) ( digitized ).
  • Dietrich Meyer : Chiliastic hope and eschatological expectation within the Brethren and the mission at Zinzendorf and Spangenberg . In: Wolfgang Breul , Jan Carsten Schnurr (eds.): Historical consciousness and future expectation in Pietism and Awakening Movement , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2013, pp. 129–140.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see also: Image Herrnhuter Archive
  2. ^ Hans Huth : Johann Valentin Haidt . In: Anzeiger des Germanisches Nationalmuseums 1963, pp. 166–174, here p. 169 ( digitized version ).
  3. ↑ ... the missionaries of the Moravian Brethren were not concerned with the systematic founding of congregations or even churches, but with gaining "firstfruits", that is, with pastoral care for individual committed Christians, who in turn could devote themselves to the mission : "We are looking for firstfruits from the nations, and when we have two or four of them, we leave them to the Savior, what he wants to do through them," Andreas Tasche in: https://www.ebu.de/mission/missionsgeschichte /
  4. ↑ a b Mark Häberlein : "Mohren", corporate society and the Atlantic world. Minorities and Cultural Contacts in the Early Modern Age . In: Claudia Schnurmann, Hartmut Lehmann (Eds.): Atlantic understandings: essays on European and American history in honor of Hermann Wellenreuther . LIT Verlag Hamburg 2006, pp. 77-102, here p. 97.
  5. ↑ Gisela Mettele: Weltbürgertum or God's Kingdom: the Moravian Brethren as a global community 1727-1857. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2009, p. 107.
  6. ↑ Gisela Mettele: Weltbürgertum or Gottesreich , Göttingen 2009, p. 263.
  7. ↑ a b c Dietrich Meyer: Chiliastic hope and eschatological expectation within the Brethren and the mission near Zinzendorf and Spangenberg , Göttingen 2013, p. 136.
  8. ↑ David Cranz : Old and New Brothers History or Brief History of the Evangelical Brothers Unity , 2nd edition Barby 1772, pp. 454–456.
  9. ^ Jon F. Sensbach: Rebecca's revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World. Harvard University Press, 2005. p. 190.
  10. ↑ Sirinya Pakditawan: The stereotyping representation of Indians and their modification in the work of James Fenimore Cooper (dissertation). Diplomica Verlag 2007, pp. 86-89.
  11. ↑ Katherine Gerbner: Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World ( https://azpdf.tips/christian-slavery-conversion-and-race-in-the-protestant-atlantic-world-pdf-free.html ) , Philadelphia 2018, p. 171 f.
  12. ^ Hans Huth: Johann Valentin Haidt . In: Anzeiger des Germanisches Nationalmuseums 1963, pp. 166–174, here p. 170 ( digitized version ).