The Moravian Choir System and an 18th c. Dress Code
A Moravian Girl
Photo Attribution: John Valentine Haidt, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Although music was a passion of the early Moravians, their choir system had nothing to do with singing. Instead, the system provided a kind of social order. As Liesl explained to Lafayette in The Bookmark: “Our choirs are groupings based on age, gender, and marital status. We have choirs for every stage of life. Choirs for children and choirs for Single Sisters, Single Brothers, Married Brothers, Married Sisters, and for Widows.”
Background
The choir system started almost from birth. As soon as babies were weaned, they were cared for 24/7 by Single Sisters in the communal nursery. From that point on, children were raised in the choir system. For example, a baby girl would move to the Little Girls’ Choir, the Older Girls’ Choir, and then on to the Single Sisters’ Choir. If she married, she would join the Married Womens’ Choir, and if her husband died, she would become a member of the Widows’ Choir. Of course, if a widow were to remarry, she would rejoin the ranks of the Married Womens’ Choir. As you can see, this was a very fluid system!
The choir was the most important thing in these people’s lives, and in many ways, their choir became their family. As an early Moravian, you would have gone to school with your choir, worshipped with them, taken your meals together, and slept with your choir each night. Families did not live together. Instead, each family member lived with their own choir, and as the community grew, the Moravians built individual choir houses, which still exist today. When you died, you were even buried with your choir. A real cradle-to-grave system!
You are probably wondering why people would choose to live like this. There are two possible explanations. The first is a spiritual one. Count Zinzendorf, who is called the Father of the Moravians, strongly encouraged the choir system, believing a person’s faith developed best when surrounded by people just like themselves.
The second explanation is a more practical one. It’s hard to imagine now, but when the Moravians first arrived, Bethlehem was on the frontier with nothing but forests and American Indians. Everyone had to work in order for the community to survive. Plus, these Moravians had come here primarily to be missionaries, and at any given time, as many as sixty percent of the adults were out doing missionary work. Someone had to take care of the children, and the choir system fulfilled that need.
One particularly fascinating aspect of the choir system’s living arrangements concerns husbands and wives. (You are probably already wondering about this.) If husbands and wives lived apart from one another, how did they ever have little Moravians? Well, these people were nothing if not practical, and they devised something called the “conjugal room.”
We don’t know exactly how the conjugal room operated, but we assume they had some kind of sign-up sheet where married couples could reserve time together: John and Mary for Tuesday night, Peter and Christina on Wednesday night etc. One thing we do know, is that Moravians believed in married love and welcomed children into the community. But, they also believed in their choir system, and the conjugal room was a perfect solution.
It’s important to understand that the choir system only lasted for the first twenty years, probably until the community was fully established. No doubt, parents and their children were happy to live together, but two groups, the Single Sisters and the Widows, continued to live in their respective houses. Just to be clear, the choir system ended long ago, and I would not want anyone to think that Moravians still live this way!
The Ribbons
An early Moravian woman’s clothing had a very distinctive style. For one thing, a Moravian woman would always wear ribbons tied in a bow under her chin and crisscrossing the front of her vest. The color of the ribbon told you a lot about her: red ribbons were for girls, pink ribbons for single women, blue ribbons for married women, and white ribbons were reserved for widows. How lucky for the men—all they had to do was take one look at a woman’s ribbons to know whether she was available!
The ribbons carried deep significance, and when a woman moved on to another choir, the event was marked with a touching ribbon-changing ceremony. For example, when a woman married, she would remove her pink ribbons for the last time and the don the blue ribbons for the first time.
The Haube
Another unusual feature of a Moravian Woman’s clothing was the Haube, a close-fitting cap, also known as a Schnäbel Haube. Schnäbel means beak in German and referred to the shape of the cap which came to a point in the middle of the forehead, looking almost like a bird’s beak. It was considered immodest for a woman to show her hair in public, so she would tuck every strand inside her cap. The Haube came in two pieces: a sort of headband and the cap itself, both made from a gauzy material. Count Zinzendorf called the Haube a “visible diadem,” representing the burial cloth of Jesus.
Over time, Moravian women became less and less enamored with the Haube. This is what Liesl had to say about her Haube in The Bookmark: “...in all honesty, she often wished to be free of the useless cap that made her scalp itch and her head ache. She never spoke of her dislike for it, but surely the Elders could concern themselves with more pressing affairs than how a woman fixed her hair.”
By the early nineteenth century, Moravian women had had enough. They thought the Haube was unflattering and outdated, and they wished to wear fashionable bonnets instead. In an act of defiance that became known as the Haube Revolt, the women of Nazareth (a Moravian town just north of Bethlehem) joined together and brazenly entered a church service wearing bonnets!
The Moravian choir system and the women’s unique dress code are just two examples of the many fascinating aspects of early Moravian life.
Discover More
For a fun and educational walk around Historic Bethlehem (including some Choir Houses), take an Old Bethlehem walking tour:
For more information about the Moravians and a chance to see genuine Haubes, visit the Moravian Museum (you might even see me there!):
References
