"Amen, ja, mein Glück ist groß" : Henriette Louise von Hayn (1724-1782) ; eine Dichterin des Herrnhuter Pietismus

„Amen, yea, my lot is blessed“ Thus ends the last line of the well-known spiritual song, „Jesus makes my heart rejoice” (or “I am Jesus little lamb“). The songwriter was Henriette Louise von Hayn (b. Idstein, Germany, 1724, d. Herrnhut, Germany, 1782), whose life and work are the subject of this study. The appendices to the study also make many documents pertaining to Hayn available to other scholars. At the age of 20, Hayn fled her parents’ (Lutheran) home in Idstein to join the pietist-leaning Brüdergemeine (today called the Moravian Church or Herrnhuter). The leader of the Brüdergemeine, Count Zinzendorf, had been exiled from Herrnhut (in the Oberlausitz region) and had founded a settlement called Herrnhaag (near present-day Büdingen). Hayn lived and worked as governess of the girls in the Herrnhaag community and she was a devoted adherent of the „Blood and Wounds Piety“ which reigned there. This form of piety centered around the crucified Jesus, also called the „little martyr lamb“ or the Savior, and found expression through music, poems and festive productions in the community. The Brüdergemeine understood all of life to take place „before the Savior“ and to have a liturgical character. It is therefore impossible to delineate between „secular“ und „clerical“ positions in the time during and immediately following Zinzendorf’s leadership. Furthermore, the structure and piety of the Brüdergemeine were influened by a reliance on the traditions of the old Unitas Fratrum (the offices of deacon, presbyter and bishop). The Herrnhuter were also very innovative and invented new offices such as those of the Bandenhalter/innen or Chorhelfer/innen. These latter were part of a system of parallel offices for men and women, who were seen as equally valuable. Pastoral care was central in this system, and it was thought that women would best minister to other women. Symmetrical structures thus arose: acolyte as the lowest level of clerical office, then deacon / deaconess, and priest /priestess; only the office of bishop remained reserved for men alone. In 1748, Henriette Louise von Hayn was confirmed, first as an acolyte, and later as a deaconess in Herrnhaag. When the Herrnhaag settlement disbanded in 1750, Henriette Louise von Hayn accompanied the girls that she supervised to Herrnhut, where she became the director of the girls’ institution. Sometime around 1751, Hayn underwent an intense personal experience of redemption through Jesus. In her autobiographical Lebenslauf, Hayn describes in detail how this „Blut-Taufe“ prompted her to pursue her writing of spiritual songs with even more conviction. Hayn’s songs focused on a deep love of the crucified Jesus. In 1766 Henriette Louise von Hayn was appointed to the position of Chorhelferin (‘Chor Helper’) of the Single Sisters in Herrnhut; that is, she became the spiritual leader of up to 400 single women in Herrnhut, who lived and worked together in an independent cooperative (Chor). Many poems stemming from this period served as the basis for liturgical celebrations, such as the annual festival of the Single Sisters Chor on the 4th of May. Other compositions include occasional poems and songs. Unfortunately, few of the melodies for these songs are known today. The occasional poems, which call the women concerned by name, provide insight into lives of the Single Sisters. This study allows these women, in the voice of Henriette Louise von Hayn, to speak, and takes the subjective statements of these women seriously. This was not always the case in the scholarship. Thus the most important study to date on the life of Single Sisters in Herrnhut was Otto Uttendörfer’s „Zinzendorf und die Frauen“ (1921), which included few quotes from the women themselves, but rather Zinzendorf’s opinions about the women. Even if this study’s approach shares a feminist-theological concern with female subjectivity, there is nonetheless one crucial difference: The present study takes Protestant church values – the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ – as its determining frame of reference. The distinctive and thoroughly positive piety of Henriette Louise von Hayn and her fellow sisters fit into this frame. Some feminist critics have maintained that crucifixion piety has served as an instrument of oppression for women in both the past and the present. To the contrary, this study seeks to show through the example of Henriette Louise von Hayn, that love of the crucified and resurrected Jesus can actually help women to cope with life and can even enable individual creativity. The appendices to the study include among other things: Hayn’s autobiographical Lebenslauf; the cantata text for the children’s Christmas program in 1749; cantata texts for the Single Sisters’ Chor festivals of 1750 and 1780; indexes of Hayn’s published and unpublished songs and poems as well as transcripts of 14 of Henriette Louise von Hayn’s addresses; a report from the Girls’ House in Herrnhut in 1762, describing life in Herrnhut; and the ‘Rules of the House’ for the Single Sisters’ Chor of 1779.