Page 6 - Moravain Messenger December 2020

In the past year we have marked the 75th Anniversary of the end of the Second World War. However, Germany was left devastated by the war and the United Kingdom was nearly bankrupt. Bishop Clarence Shawe, from the British Province and a fluent French and German speaker, was involved in the work of saving much of the property of the Moravian Church in Europe. This he managed to do by insisting on the international nature of the Moravian Church.
Below is a transcript of a report made by Tranugett Steinmann to J G Fuerstenberger relating to the state of Church property in Europe immediately after the end of the war and distributed by Bishop Shawe.
1945 The Situation of the Moravian Colonies in Germany: Special Report on the Fate of Herrnhut on the Cessation of Hostilities
Three photos all showing the Moravian Church on the left looking towards the Herrschaftshaus. The top picture was taken before May 1945. The middle picture was taken after the burning of the Church and Herrschaftshaus in May 1945. One of the first acts of reconstruction in Herrnhut was the building of an arch to hold the old Church bell. The bottom picture shows the arch and the restored Herrschaftshaus. The Church has never been rebuilt and the congregation at Herrnhut use the site of the old Church hall as the Church building.
(We received the news given below from the former secretary of our financial department, Mr Traugott Steinmann, a Swiss who left Herrnhut at the end of July and travelled via Prague to Zurich where he arrived on August 21st)
The Moravian colonies in Western Germany:
Konigsfeld in the Black Forest, the Moravian quarter at Neuwied on the Rhine, Bad Boll in Wurtemberg, as well as Zeist near Utrecht in Holland did not seem to have suffered very severely during the last phase of the war. The two Moravian Churches in Berlin, in the Wilhelmstrasse and in Neukolln were destroyed by air raids even before 1944.
Our school at Kleinwelka was closed at the beginning of the war, and at the end of 1944 we were forced to hand over our other schools to the 'Party' for their Youth Organisations.
The three Moravian colonies in Central Germany:
Gnadau near Magdeburg, Neudietendorf and Ebersdorf in Thuringia, gave shelter to a large number of Moravian refugees from Silesia. The Moravian colonies in Silesia had witnessed much fighting and suffered devestations which could be ascertained from Nieskey, on the other side of the Gorlitz Niesse. All we know of Neusalz, Gnadenberg and Gnadenfeld is that important buildings were destroyed. At Gnadenfrie the machinery in our weaving mills is said to have been carried off to Russia. The deaconesses from the home 'Emmaus' at Niesky - the former superintendent of which is still Pastor Theodore Schmidt, formerly in Berne - have moved to Ebersdorf where they have taken over the hospital.
The mother colony Herrnhut has suffered least up to the time of capitulation. It gave shelter to large numbers of evacuees from Silesia on their way to the West. The inhabitants themselves were able to remain at Herrnhut until - on the Sunday before Ascension Day, May 6th 1945 - the German force in Southern Lausitz ordered immediate evacuation. In spite of all the very urgent protests of the civilian population, the military authorities
persisted in their decision to offer resistance once at Herrnhut. The 'Volkssturm' (a people's militia set up by the Nazi Party) alone, realising the position, refused to take part in the fighting. On May 8th, when the bells were ringing everywhere else, the Russians advanced from the North towards Herrnhut, where German soldiers shot at them from the houses. After the fight the victors took the little town, that had only been temporarily barricaded by storm and gave the soldiers leave to pillage. On this occasion fire was set to various parts of Herrnhut. The Church and the houses surrounding were utterly burnt down, the central part of the main street was destroyed and the 'Herrschaftshaus' - the home of the brethren and sisters of the community - were razed to the ground. Only the home for the Widows and the 'Vogtshof', the official headquarters, lying on the outskirts, were saved. To our great joy the record office with all its important documents suffered no harm.
The report goes on to give a vivid picture of further developments after the Russian field soldiers were relieved by smaller detachments of guards.
It was a good thing that the inhabitants of Herrnhut were able to return immediately, so that a body of experienced men, among whom were Dr Marx and Mr Vogt, the director of Missions, were in a position to take energetic measures for clearing up and restoring order, taking care that every single individual took up his or her share of the work. Excellent relations were soon established with the officer in command. In July the supply of food stuffs was still fairly good, but it soon became inadequate on account of the influx of Germans who had been evacuated from Silesia and Czechoslovakia. The population of the district of Herrnhut, which numbered 11,000 in normal times, now amounts to 23,000. In order to facilitate the laying in of supplies for the coming winter the officer in command restored the three Zinzendorf estates near Herrnhut, which the Moravians had been forced to sell 10 years ago in order to avoid confiscation, to their rightful owners for careful management. This important work is superintended by a native of Switzerland,
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