National Council on Public History

 Rebecca Lawrence
Museum Program & Volunteer Facilitator, Ephrata Cloister

Research:

As a museum educator, my professional goal is to facilitate personal experiences with ideas and objects that lead to understanding the daily life and religious thought of the Ephrata community for families, students, visitors, and volunteers at the Historic Ephrata Cloister. Within my work, my historical research into the life and visual culture of the Ephrata brethren explores the creation and function of visual wayfinding tools that adorned the worship halls and living spaces of the mid 18^th century Ephrata religious community. Commonly referred to as Fraktur wallcharts, these large German calligraphic illustrated works made by and for Ephrata’s members provided opportunities to direct themselves in their spiritual life, know where to find and unite with the Divine, and lastly to remind them of their reward for living an anticipated life (union with God and life in the heavenly realm). Fraktur was the typographic artistic vehicle for the production and map of their disciplined life. My paper, Placards of Pietism at the Historic Ephrata Cloister, offered as part of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies Fraktur and the Everyday Lives of Germans in Pennsylvania and the Atlantic World, 1683-1850Conference (Philadelphia, March 2015) discusses the history and cultural identity of Fraktur in colonial PA German religious life, relationships between text and image within Ephrata’s Fraktur wallcharts, and anchors my new interpretation in the specific religious thought and action of the Ephrata community. In addition to sharing this historical research in the traditional setting, I will be incorporating these new interpretive themes and ideas into our self-guided and facilitated visitor experiences in our education programming.

Discussion