Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf

Few Germans of the baroque period knew the New World and directly influenced it as much as did Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, one of the earliest Protestant missionaries. When he visited the Moravian mission in the West Indies he became aware of the plight of the slaves and, in contrast with other Europeans, treated them with respect while seeking to convert them to Christianity. He traveled to America and established a religious community in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. In England he reorganized an ancient national church, the Bohemian Brethren, and negotiated with the archbishop of Canterbury to have it recognized by the Church of England. In his literary output Zinzendorf was prolific: his published oeuvre amounts to more than twenty thousand pages of songs, sermons, and discourses, and some two hundred philosophical, theological, and polemical works. Zinzendorf's hymns are still sung in several Protestant denominations, and, of course, are strongly represented in Moravian Church hymnals.

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