Saxony: Festival week "300 Years Herrnhut" opened with a service

Herrnhut (dpa/sn) - The Evangelical Brethren Church in Herrnhut in East Saxony commemorated its founding 300 years ago with a festival service on Sunday in the renovated church hall.

Saxony: Festival week "300 Years Herrnhut" opened with a service

Herrnhut (dpa/sn) - The Evangelical Brethren Church in Herrnhut in East Saxony commemorated its founding 300 years ago with a festival service on Sunday in the renovated church hall. At the same time, a festival week for the local anniversary was opened, which includes concerts, church services, celebrations and a parade until June 19th. Since then, Herrnhut has been a place "that brings people together," said Pastor Peter Vogt. At that time it was refugees from Moravia who found refuge here, today there are people from the Ukraine among them.

Nikolaus Ludwig Graf von Zinzendorf (1700-1760) granted the descendants of the Bohemian Brothers and religious refugees asylum on his estate in the 18th century and founded the place "under the Lord's hat" with them. On June 17, 1722, the first tree for a small house was felled on the country road between Löbau and Zittau. Thus began the history of the small town in Upper Lusatia, which is now known throughout the world for its slogans, the Moravian Stars and the Moravian Mission.

The settlement quickly developed into an important place for crafts and trade: through the expansion and missionary activities of the Moravian Church, it became the center of a globally networked church renewal movement.

The Moravian Church is a Protestant free church, it goes back to the 1457 created Bohemian Brethren Unity. The name derives from the Latin term "Unitas Fratrum" for Bohemian brothers. The relatives lived as a Protestant minority in the Catholic Kingdom of Bohemia. Her spiritual ancestor was the reformer Jan Hus (1371-1415), who was burned as a heretic. The current Brethren Unity is divided into 29 provinces with over 1.2 million members worldwide, around 70 percent of them in Africa - according to their own statements, they have a total of around 22,800 members in Europe.