1. Manuscripts and Collections

The holdings of the Archives are searchable through conventional finding aids in the form of inventories, subject inventories, card indexes, and registers in the reading room of the Unity Archives (Moravian Archive). Many materials are cataloged in the archival database (Augias), which is searchable through the internet. Several additional inventories are available in PDF form:


Photo-Collections

Collections The collections of the Unity Archives are accessible through typewritten inventories and the archival database. Also, roughly 3,000 photographs taken in the mission territories of Nyasa (today southern Tanzania) and South Africa West, circa 1890-1940, have already been digitized and made accessible for research purposes through the International Mission Photography Archives (IMPA); similarly, a collection of pictorial materials about the Inuit in Labrador has been digitized and made accessible by The Labrador Inuit Through Moravian Eyes.


Sheet Music Collection

The Sheet Music Collection of the Unity Archives (Moravian Archive) with its approximate 3,000 musical manuscripts was cataloged by the Repertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM) and made searchable online. Search the library abbreviation D-HER to access manuscripts from the Unity Archives (Moravian Archives).

  • Repertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM)
    RISM Catalog

Collection of Moravian Memoirs

2. Library

The library of the Unity Archives (Moravian Archive) is a reference library, which is only to be used at the facility. It is accessible through the use of a card catalog (alphabetical and methodical), which can be found in the reading room. Accessions since 1945, the NB.I.R.3: Recent Historical Texts (after 1760), and Comeniana are all cataloged using the library software Allegro-C. These texts can be searched using the workstation in the reading room or by utilizing the online search function at PionLib. The catalog is also integrated and searchable through the Virtueller Katalog Theologie und Kirche (VThK).


Acta Unitatis Fratrum - Lissa Folios

The  unique collection of sources of the Acta Unitatis Fratrum (Lissa Folios) with ist 14 volumes from the 16th century provides Information about the origin and development of the old Unity of the Brethren. Volumes 1-13 are owned by the Unity Archives in Herrnhut and are held in the Czech National Archives in Prague. They were digitized there from 2013-2014 and have been available to scholars on the Internet since 2017.


Gemein-Nachrichten - Congregational Accounts

The Unity Archives in Herrnhut, together with the State Digitisation Programme for Science and Culture of the Free State of Saxony (LDP), has begun to gradually digitise and publish the Gemein-Nachrichten - Congregational Accounts 1765-1818. The printed journal "Nachrichten aus der Brüdergemeine", which followed the Gemein-Nachrichten 1819-1894, has been digitised at Memorial University of Newfoundland and can also be studied online: