Selection and Destruction in Moravian Archives Between 1760 and 1810

Abstract

Although Moravians have traditionally been considered good record-keepers, substantial amounts of documents were destroyed during the decades between 1760 and 1810. When the Unity Archives was founded as the central archives for the worldwide Moravian Church in 1764, a group of specially appointed “revisers” sifted through the material and destroyed documents that did not fit the reinvented image of the Moravian Church of the post-Zinzendorf era. By controlling the content of their archives, Moravians tried to manipulate the historiography of their church. As this article will argue, the work of the Moravian archivist was not invisible; on the contrary, the archivist edited the surviving record.