Herrnhaag
It and Marienborn, a nearby sister community, are located in the Wetterau, an area of Hesse, north of Frankfurt am Main in Germany.
“Herrnhaag was designed to express the Moravian ideal before it was built” [1] and served a unique purpose: it was planned as the House of God.
The festivals held in the Saal provided a multimedia effect on worshippers resulting from the combination of illuminations, music, ritual, paintings and pageantry.
There is some evidence that they practiced this literally among themselves and perhaps between the sexes as well, though one should be careful to make conclusions, as the times of Count Zinzendorf were immersed in slander and defamatory libels, of which it is difficult to distinguish between true and false (a famous example is Voltaire's "Vie privée du roi de Prusse").
Of such, Count Zinzendorfs "Anhang, als ein zweiter Theil zu dem Gesang-Buche der Evangelischen Brüder-Gemeinen" (Addition, as a second part to the song-book of the evangelical brother-congregations), S. I.
Verse (of the Lamb, Christ): "Das weibliche geschlecht hat den respect und recht, zu tragen deine seelen in solchen leibes-hölen, die dich als GOtt empfangen, daraus du menschlich gangen (The female sex have the respect and right, to bear thy soul in such body-holes, which thy as God received, from there out you humanly went)".
The publication of these books caused great stir, and is probably a main reason why the Count suddenly in the same year moved to London, of a fear he might be arrested by the authorities in Büdingen.
Many within and without the church were scandalized by rumors of such behavior and Ludwig von Zinzendorf finally decided to take action, threatening to whip those involved.
But the decision to actually close the settlement was the result of the new local ruler, Gustav Friedrich Count of Ysenburg-Büdingen, who demanded that the Moravians abjure Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf and swear fealty only to himself.
In the latter twentieth-century Herrnhaag was resettled as a Moravian commune and restoration work was begun on the Lichtenburg, the "Fortress of Light", containing the Saal worship hall and the rooms where Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf had lived, and the Sisters' House.
