Sunday, September 25, 2011
HARMONY, Pa.
Professor and author Hermann Ehmer of Stuttgart, Germany, will discuss the German roots of the communal Harmony Society at a special evening program at Harmony Museum on Tuesday.
The program will begin with a reception at 7 p.m. for Ehmer and his wife Judith, a native of Ambridge, Pa.
Ehmer will speak at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free at the museum’s Stewart Hall, 218 Mercer St., in the center of Harmony’s national Historic Landmark District.
Ehmer, who holds a doctorate in theology, is a widely published scholar of German church history who retired last year as director of the national Protestant Church Archives in Stuttgart, a post he had held since 1988.
Nearly 900 pacifist Lutheran Separatists came to Butler County from the Stuttgart area in the southwestern German duchy of Wurttemberg to escape militarism and enjoy America’s freedom of religion, with separation of church and state. Christ’s imminent return was a core belief.
Although the society became one of 19th-century America’s most successful, and wealthy communal groups, its adoption of celibacy assured a limited future.
When the group relocated to Indiana territory in 1814, area resettlement was led by pacifist Mennonites.
In 1824, the Harmonists returned to Pennsylvania to establish their third and final home in Economy, now Ambridge, just 22 miles from Harmony.
The society was dissolved by its last members in 1905 and is commemorated there by Old Economy Village.
Ranked among the Pittsburgh region’s 25 most popular museums, the eight-property Harmony Museum is open for guided tours from 1 to 4 p.m. daily except Mondays and holidays.
Harmony is at Interstate 79 exits 87-88, about 10 miles north of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and 30 miles south of Interstate 80.