This interview marks the tenth in a series where we meet with a user of the Moravian Archives to discuss their unique experience working with our collections in Bethlehem. In December 2025, we sat down with Dr. Māra Grudule to discuss her research at the Moravian Archives.

Thomas McCullough: Māra, thank you for joining me today for this Interview with a Researcher. It’s really nice to have you with us as part of this series after you being here in Bethlehem for several months at the Archives and getting to know you a little bit better; however, for those who haven’t had the opportunity to meet you here at the Archives or see your recent presentation online, could you tell us a little bit about yourself? Who are you, what is your background, and how do you get here to the archives?

Dr. Māra Grudule: I’m a university professor working at the University of Latvia, and also I’m a senior researcher at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Arts, also in Latvia and belonging to the University of Latvia. So I am working with the students and doing the research.

I’m interested in the old times (sixteenth to eighteenth and nineteenth century maybe) and the Baltic German heritage. For many centuries the Germans were upper class and they did a lot for Latvian culture, especially Latvian literature, from the sixteenth to the first part of the nineteenth century. That’s what I’m studying; also, German-Latvian connections, because of the theory of translation, and also Baltic German heritage, literature, and culture.

TM: You mentioned languages and translation. Do you speak or read multiple languages?

MG: Not many, not many. My native language is Latvian, and my second language is English. I started to learn Russian at school, and I learned German mostly on my own, because I had to understand the text to compare the translations.

TM: Well, from what I’ve seen and heard from your research, I envy your ability to read so many languages. That being said, can you tell us a little bit about your journey to the Moravian Archives? How did you first learn about either the Moravians or the Moravian Archives?

MG: The Brüdergemeine or Herrnhuters (Moravians) also have a great impact on Latvian cultural history. The first, Moravians, let’s say, came to one part of Latvia that’s formerly “Livland” in 1729. And they were extremely popular among the native inhabitants (that is, Latvians), because in the eighteenth century there was serfdom in Latvia. And most of the Latvians were serfs or peasants. Germans treating them as brothers, that was really something. The Latvians gained their self-esteem and learned how to make things together and also learned to write and read more than before. The first Latvian writers, even, emerged with a Moravian background. And as a researcher of the eighteenth-century Latvian cultural history and literature, I also studied the first Latvian Moravian (Herrnhuter) songs and the impact of the songs on the history of culture. One of the chief Brüdergemeine poets is Georg Heinrich Loskiel. I think that he may be the best-known poet. He compiled two spiritual books. Both of them were extremely, extremely popular with Latvians till the beginning of the twentieth century and had many editions. I read his biography and came to the fact that he died here and was buried here [in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania]. And I had to work on an article about Loskiel that was published last year in the Proceedings of the National Library of Latvia (Latvijas Nacionālās bibliotēkas Zinātniskie raksti). Because I had to give an insight into his biography, I found the Moravian Archives on the internet. And I wrote a letter to [MAB director] Paul Peucker, and he encouraged me to use the materials you have here. But, uh, I didn’t have any idea of such rich collections you have. And then there was a possibility to gain a fellowship to do research in the United States. And I thought, why not? I’ll try, because Loskiel is not the only Moravian here as a Baltic German. And so I got the fellowship and could come and work here, thanks to the Baltic American Freedom Foundation. It’s very important for them.

TM: Awesome. You mentioned publishing something in proceedings last year. Was that also related to Loskiel?

MG: Yes, that was an article devoted to Loskiel.  Last year or perhaps the year before, there was an enormous exhibition devoted to the Brüdergemeine and the Herrnutians in Latvian cultural history, as well as lectures and seminars on the Brüdergemeine in Latvia.  One of the meetings was my lecture about Loskiel, and after that I published an article.

TM: Okay. I recall when I was looking at your CV that you had also written or spoken about Latvians in Herrnhut during the early twentieth century.

MG: That’s a good example, but I’m not interested in the twentieth century. That came about thanks to the [former Unity Archives] archivist, Rüdiger Kröger. I have been several times to Herrnhut and worked there, and the University of Latvia even had a joint conference with the archives in Herrnhut, with six or seven scholars from Latvia who came to Herrnhut. Rüdiger Kröger worked on the Latvian books in the archives, and he said, “there’s a songbook that maybe you don’t know. And the University of Latvia does not have the songbook.” The songbook was specifically for the prisoners of war during the First World War. A very neat small songbook in Estonian and the same in Latvian, and an anthology of spiritual songs, especially made for the Latvian prisoners of war. There was also a newspaper—a small periodical with several issues—for the prisoners of war. And I made an article on that theme as well, thanks to Rüdiger Kröger (see article here).

TM: Were you particularly interested in it because of the musical components?

MG: More of my interest was in the context: Germans working on Latvian texts just a couple of years after Latvia became independent. So the attitudes between Germans and Latvians changed, with such a songbook… both the texts and context were very interesting for me.

TM: Fascinating. Whether here at Moravian Archives in Bethlehem or at the Unity Archives in Herrnhut, Germany, has there been anything that you’ve come across that was really exciting when you first found it?

MG: In Herrnhut, I had some special ideas, but I didn’t have as much time as I have had here in Bethlehem, so this was a special project looking at Baltic German Moravians in Bethlehem, with its own local history. Honestly, before coming here, I knew about Loskiel and about the spiritual songs in Latvian, but I had never ever studied so much and gone so deep in the things I was interested about when I was in Herrnhut, because I haven’t had time to understand things as they were there. Your archives are very, very rich, but I’m sure that Herrnhut has the same!

TM: You’ve been here in Bethlehem the last few months. Has there been a particular document that you came across or worked with while you were here that was important for your research?

MG: Oh, a lot of things. As I said already, I didn’t have any expectations about the Bethlehem project, the Moravian project here at all. Honestly, I went through the catalog only because of the Baltic Germans. I traced Livland (a historical region comprising of parts of modern-day Latvia and Estonia) and so on and so on. The whole thing for me was amazing. I went through Fogelman, Atwood, Smaby, and other books to understand, and that was great.

 

Every day—I can say—every day, it’s like a mosaic. You come across something and understand something better, even if it [is] not connected to the Moravians. For example, yesterday that was in the Rice Papers from the nineteenth century. For the first time in my life, I saw the period before photos, when you have a paper you are writing letters on, and on the paper there are sights of the city you are in. So you can buy special paper for letters that come with drawings of the city. And many, many such papers are there, so you can trace not only the person who’s been in Venice, in Berlin, in Kleinwelka, but you can also see the portraits of the city.

TM: That’s really interesting, not only learning about like your particular subjects that you’re looking at, but as an added bonus, you’re also seeing the development of new technology, in material culture, and a bit about how communications change over time.

MG: Yes. I think I could give could give a small lecture on those letter papers. That was so interesting. Some of them were black and white. And the person writing the letters colored in only the dresses of the women. Red dresses, black and white, cities and red dresses of the women. And of course, some of the letters are colored already. Also, I didn’t know about the struggle between the Moravians and the Lutheran and Reformed Churches, all that stuff in the middle and late eighteenth century. And it turns out to be very important for Latvian history, because in Halle there was [Siegmund Jakob] Baumgarten, one of the main polemicists against the Moravian Church. Not many, but some of the Baltic German pastors studied in Halle and heard the lectures of Baumgarten. One of them, Gotthard Friedric Stender, was against the Moravian Church, and I didn’t understand why, because in one part of Latvia, the Moravians were already very popular. But he was so against the Moravians. And it turns out he was a pupil of Baumgarten and perhaps influenced by him. But I’m getting away from the archives theme!

TM: It’s okay! One of the things that I enjoyed most during your visit here was hearing a lot of your research come together when you presented on Georg Heinrich Loskiel’s Extempore on a Wagon. Could you tell folks who are not familiar a little bit more about that? (watch a recording of Dr. Grudule’s lecture here on YouTube!)

MG: Yes, of course. Loskiel… that is my subject and object, working with most of his materials here in Bethlehem. There have been many, many letters I have had to go through. Loskiel visited the Moravians working with Christian American Indians in 1803, as a bishop, and devoted to this journey a poem consisting of 162 quatrains, so quite a long one. And there are at least eight handwritten copies of the poem, and it was composed in German later and translated and published in English. It means that some people were really interested in this text, to copy and to have the text at home, throughout the nineteenth century. I’ve also been learning new details appear about Loskiel’s connections to the Moravians. For example, yesterday I got a letter from Mike Swaldo.

TM: The archivist of John Heckewelder Memorial Church in Gnadenhutten, Ohio, right?

MG: Yes, and he sent me a nice email, with images of a letter from Loskiel to the missionary David Zeisberger, discussing financial problems. And that’s also one part of the mosaic that comes together when you think about Moravians’ relationships with the Brüdergemeine in Herrnhut and Loskiel’s role as bishop and as friend.

TM: I remember you telling the audience during your lecture here at the archives how interesting to see what a great reception Loskiel gets in many of the places he visits. He must have been admired or well liked by his colleagues.

MG: Yeah, to my mind, he was quiet but very sincere and very heartly—a man with a nice heart, let’s say. And maybe his contribution is not in changing rules, but, more in friendship and helping people. And that’s why he has fallen out of the main story of the Moravian Church at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

TM: Because he’s not controversial enough, I guess?

MG: I don’t think that he’s controversial at all. It’s difficult to say, maybe, but I think he could be a Moravian in his heart, and his works were not different from his writings and thoughts. Not all people are like that.

TM: And he seems to have been extremely busy, with a lot of pressure put on him.

MG: Yes, yes. That’s it, and I think it was not an easy time for him psychologically. For context, Loskiel visited the Moravians working with American Indians, and Zeisberger himself said, “In thirty years, nobody has come to visit us…” And Loskiel came, and then he had to read letters that he had not consulted Herrnhut to go there, and that he had spent a lot of money, and so on and so on. I think Herrnhut didn’t understand the situation there, how the Moravians lived.

TM: Yes, they couldn’t have a quick Zoom meeting to determine major changes to the missions. What other options would there have been really for Loskiel to understand the full scope of what was happening in the missions or the American context at the time?

MG: Of course, and also the attitudes between Moravians and American Indians changed a lot at the beginning of the nineteenth century. That was a difficult time, difficult time.

TM: We’ve been very fortunate to have you give a lecture on Georg Heinrich Loskiel while you were here. From what you’ve learned already about Loskiel and about Baltic Moravians who came to Bethlehem or to other parts of North America, have you given any other presentations or lectures covering this subject? Do you ultimately hope to to write something about this and publish it?

MG: Yeah, I gave a small paper in Oklahoma, at a conference on Loskiel. There I had to get together, in a nutshell, a history of Latvia and also of Loskiel. I had only eighteen minutes, to my mind. But I would like to publish Loskiel’s Extempore in Latvian. I would like the poem to be translated into Latvian, and to write an introduction about Loskiel and his American period, alongside the translation of the poem. It’s such an interesting work. And today I found [Anna Rosina] Kliest’s letters to [John] Heckewelder from 1804, returning after the journey and where she mentions Loskiel.

TM: You mention Kliest, and now that I think of it, her own interest in composition or poetry is interesting considering her role accompanying Loskiel during the trip.

MG: Yes, and there are a couple of letters also before the journey, where she mentions Loskiel and writes about him.

TM: Well, I can’t wait to see what you publish about your research here and in Herrnhut. I think it’s a fantastic idea to publish Extempore in Latvian, given that Loskiel has a large impact in Latvian history and culture.

MG: Yes, if I could publish such, an edition in three languages so that many people interested in it could benefit, in German, English and Latvian, that would be ideal

TM: That’s a great idea! Well, this has been awesome talking with you. One final thought I wanted to ask about is, given what you know either from working here or researching the Moravians, in general, what do you wish others knew about either the Moravian Archives or about Moravian history?

MG: Other researchers, you mean? I think what you have can help others understand what’s the real life behind the doors, everything. You can also look study visuality, the visual materials, and material culture; the missionaries were fond of handwork, the ladies especially. How did they color? How did they illustrate poems with different ornaments? Women’s studies, of course.

And to my mind, also the question of German and English language is extremely interesting, how the whole German community starts to learn English and switch over to the English language, and they are bilingual. This aspect would be interesting. There are diaries from New York, for example, that are in English, not only German. So both languages were used parallel.

Yeah, a lot of things! If you are interested in the life in the past, you will find 100% something here, as well.

TM: Thank you so much for the ringing endorsement for people to come visit the archives and learn more I thought I knew a lot about your research up to this point, but now, just talking to you one on one, I feel like I’ve gotten to know you more and about what you’ve been doing here. It’s been a real pleasure having you visit us each day here at the archives for the last few months. And it will be sad to see you go, as well, so.

MG: Yeah, but I should thank you, because without you, I don’t think that I’ll have so many nice experiences. Not only the exhibition [in connection with the Loskiel lecture], but all the time here. Without your consultations, I think I wouldn’t find so many materials here, without you and your intelligence and knowledge and so on.

TM: Thank you so much. It’s a team effort with the researchers and the staff. And so that’s very much appreciated. It’ll be easier in the future when we have more materials catalogued. And then you won’t have to rely as much on opening a box of things that haven’t been gone through yet.

MG: And also, of course, I have to thank Paul, because Paul gave the first kick and said, “Okay, start with Atwood and Smaby as the first books to read, and you’ll gain important insight on the Bethlehem context.” And then I went further!

TM: Fantastic. Well, again, thanks for joining us today! I think folks will really enjoy this interview and the things to come from from your research!

Enjoyed this conversation? Be sure to check out our previous interviews here:

• Interview with Rev. Dr. Winelle Kirton-Roberts
• Interview with Dr. Josef Köstlbauer
• Interview with Dr. Christina Petterson
• Interview with Jane Chang
• Interview with Luke Soderstrom
• Interview with Anca Wilkening
• Interview with Rev. Dr. Frank Crouch
• Interview with Savannah Flanagan
• Interview with Richard Heckman