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Historical Markers
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Ephrata Cloister [Fine Arts] Historical Marker
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Name:
Ephrata Cloister [Fine Arts]

Region:
Hershey/Gettysburg/Dutch Country Region

County:
Lancaster

Marker Location:
At the site on US 322, Ephrata

Behind the Marker

A color image of an open songbook
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Die bittre Gute, oder Das Gesäng der einsamen Turtel-Taube, Manuscript hymnal,...
Despite the personal austerity with which they lived, the members of the markerEphrata Cloister were noted for their printing, bookmaking, unique music, and as the first American producers of fraktur, the highly decorated manuscript and printed pages that utilized the old German script. The word "fraktur" itself means fractured or broken, referring to the appearance of this script. The largest book ever printed in colonial America, the 1200-page The Bloody Theater, Or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians, describing the persecution of Anabaptists in Holland, was Peter Miller's translation of a seventeenth-century Dutch text into German, was published in Ephrata in 1748. Fifteen years later, the press published Philadelphia Quaker Anthony Benezet's study of Africa, perhaps the first anti-slavery book (as opposed to a short essay or manifesto) published in what became the United States. In Europe, fraktur usually consisted of public documents, whereas in America individuals had the time and freedom to turn the events of their own life, church, or family history into works of art.

The certificate of birth and baptism employs the Fraktur script and decoration characteristic of Pennsylvania legal documents. This one depicts four Hessian soldiers with their pigtails.
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Fraktur depicting Hessian soldiers, Lancaster County, PA, circa 1780.
To many, Ephrata is best known as the birthplace of American fraktur. In keeping with the Cloister members" pale countenances and rejection of the world, the Ephrata drawings utilized thin colors and soft tones rather than the much brighter colors of other Pennsylvania Germans who followed in their path. Fraktur seems first to have been used to illustrate the Ephrata community Song Book–its full title is "The bitter good, or the song of the lonesome turtledove, the Christian church here on earthy, in the valley of sadness, where it bemoans its ‘widowhood" and at the same time sings of another, future reunion"– a manuscript prepared in 1746 that contained the music for hundreds of the unique hymns that Conrad Beissel and his followers composed. Some of the earliest music composed in colonial America, these hymns resemble Gregorian chant, as opposed to the more rococo tunes (which might almost be mistaken for Mozart) characteristic of the Bethlehem Moravians. (Once owned by Benjamin Franklin, the Song Book now resides in the Library of Congress.)

Most Pennsylvania fraktur was used for religious and personal documents, including birth, confirmation, marriage, and death records. In 1771, for example, a Pennsylvania German had his son's baptismal certificate decorated with images of not only of birds and flowers, but of soldiers sporting the traditional Hessian pigtail - perhaps his former occupation.
A colorful Fraktur depicting Christians ascending a steep path to a New Jerusalem that resembles a medieval German city.  Some souls almost reached the throne of God (in the center), but wavered at the end. Their fate is the hellfire where soldiers, musicians, a Jewish peddler, and other sinners are marching to meet the devil after passing "die Babylonische Hure"[FIX ME ’–"“”]the whore of Babylon–who is holding the Pope's crown.
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Das Ewige Leben und die Ewige Verdammnis, Eternal Life and Eternal Damnation,...
Many of these documents survive in museums as beautiful examples of Pennsylvania German folk art – an excellent collection exists in the Special Collections Department of the Paterno Library at Penn State University. One especially elaborate and colorful example found there is "Das Ewige Liebe und die Ewige Verdamnis," ("Eternal Life and Eternal Damnation"), painted in Lancaster around 1820. Here, Christians ascend a steep path to a New Jerusalem that resembles a medieval German city. Some souls almost reached the throne of God (in the center), but wavered at the end. Their fate is the hellfire where soldiers, musicians, a Jewish peddler, and other sinners are marching to meet the devil after passing "die Babylonische Hure"–the whore of Babylon–who is holding the Pope's crown. Scholars debate whether the trees, flowers (especially tulips), and birds (many of them fantastically imagined and colored) refer to religious motifs or simply represent a decorative indulgence. It is probable the many birds found in Ephrata fractur represented the "turtledove," the tree the tree of life, and the three-blossomed tulip the Holy Trinity.

Many Pennsylvania "Dutch" groups, especially the Schwenkfelders, continued to use fraktur well into the nineteenth century. As the anonymous image of a girl with a doll suggests, most of fraktur reflected the quiet, insular lives of the Amish, Mennonites and other German pietist groups who still practice their faith and retain their customs in the modern world.
 
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