Think of all the representations of a star that you know. None shines more brightly than the Moravian Star with its 26 points radiating from 18 square and 8 triangular bases. But what are the origins of this heavenly body?
The conceptualization and construction are believed to have arisen from a geometry lesson. When Thomas McCullough, assistant archivist at the Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, researched various sources for a presentation on Moravian education in America, he came across a workbook of geometry exercises that could be attributed to Johann Arbo, who lived in the United States from his arrival in 1760 to his death in 1771. Arbo was a warden of the single brethren in Bethlehem and responsible for several building projects in the settlement.
In Arbo’s workbook, McCullough discovered a precise drawing of a rhombicuboctahedron, a three-dimensional geometric figure that McCullough likens to a 3-D octagon. It has 26 faces: 18 square and 8 triangular. A rhombicuboctahedron serves as the center of a Moravian Star, and the 26 points shoot out from those faces.
A few pages later in the workbook are diagrams showing how to make pyramid shapes out of paper. “We can imagine that these shapes—the rhombicuboctahedron and pyramids—were put together to create a star,” says McCullough, “but there is no record of that.”
Another piece of the puzzle comes in 1773 from the Moravian School for Boys in Niesky, Germany. Found in the geometry exercises from the textbook of 13-year-old Johann Ludwig Becker were a drawing of a pyramid with notches where glue would be applied as well as a rhombicuboctahedron. Still, no illustration of a complete star….
“Oral tradition and various manuscripts say that the first Moravian star was created in the early to mid-19th century at the Moravian School for Boys in Niesky, Germany,” says McCullough. There again, the mathematical origin of the star appears.
A diary entry by Heinz Schmidt, one of the students at Niesky, and reprinted in Dorothee Thiele’s book Morning Star, O Cheering Sight: The Moravian Star and Its History, recalls that “after the battle of Waterloo in 1815, an officer appeared in Niesky. As an educator, he understood the difficulties students were having with mathematics. He built all kinds of shapes wrapped with paper and lit from within. The best were finished with pyramid-shaped points; the points were glued on the evening before the first Sunday of Advent.” Thiele admits this recollection cannot be substantiated.
The history lovers’ search for the first record of the appearance of a Moravian Star ends at the boys school in Niesky in January 1821 where a Moravian Star with 110 points shone brilliantly in the school yard. Further accounts from the mid to late 1800s confirm that boys at the Niesky and Kleinwelka schools built Moravian Stars.
Stars for Sale
There’s something about soldiers and Moravian Stars…. An 1892 newspaper report tells of an unknown Prussian soldier who made an advent star for his comrades in his barracks. Over the next year, the soldiers worked together and made eight stars, which were displayed for sale in the window of a nearby bookbinder. They sold out immediately. It was the first—albeit very small—commercial production of Moravian Stars.
Five years later, Pieter Hendrik Verbeek took up the entrepreneurship and began serially producing Moravian Stars for sale in Herrnhut at his bookshop. In 1899, he signed a contract with the Moravian Church who sold the stars. Proceeds helped support church endeavors, including missionary work.
The first stars, made from construction paper, were not very sturdy, so Verbeek began constructing them with a hollow metal body and slots for the points, which were made from paper on metal frames. Oil lanterns provided the light, burning for six hours. Verbeek continued to improve on the design, changing out the lanterns for gas or electrical lighting, until he began manufacturing Moravian Stars very similar to those we know today.
Because of the partnership with the church, Moravian Stars made their way from Germany to other countries through missionary work. Photographs show stars in Surinam, Tanzania, Nicaragua, and South Africa.
In North America, a photo from 1907 shows a Moravian Star hung inside the Nazareth Moravian Church. In 1924, stars in white, red, and alternating white and red were being sold in the Moravian Bookshop. And in January of 1926, the Moravian Church imported 3,600 stars.
The Light
While many purchasers of Moravian Stars use them simply as decoration, the stars’ significance lies in what they symbolize and their power to inspire. Traditionally a Moravian Star is hung on the first Sunday of Advent through Epiphany, representing the star that led the wise men to Bethlehem in search of the newborn King of the Jews.
The Moravian Star is symbolic of Jesus who said: “I, Jesus, am the bright and Morning Star.” (Revelations, 22:16). The song “Morning Star, O Cheering Sight,” is sung every year as part of the Vespers Service at Christmastime in Bethlehem’s Central Moravian Church. The piece celebrates the light of Jesus that fills us and chases the darkness.
Moravian Stars were made in a variety of colors: white, yellow, red, blue, and green. The red and white stars represent the life of Christ—white for the swaddling cloth wrapped around baby Jesus in the manger and red for the blood shed by Christ in his death.
The stars have secular meaning as well. They may be gifts in friendship or passed down a family lineage as a token of heritage. A Moravian Star may stand for community as in Winston-Salem where the largest Moravian Star in the world—31 feet in diameter—shines from the roof of the Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
McCullough in his presentation points out that some families gather at Christmastime to make a Moravian Star. Eleven years ago, his family built a star together, telling stories and nibbling on cookies while they worked. The star has lit up the front of the McCullough home ever since. “When I’m traveling alone,” McCullough says, “and am thousands of miles from home, I am comforted when I encounter an unexpected sight of a Moravian Star.”
An advent tradition, a gift to a friend, a shining light in the dark at Christmastime in your community, the Moravian Star reminds us to reflect and to connect with the light inside us and all those around us.
Returning to the question of whether the physical Moravian Star was born out of geometry, its center is a rhombicuboctahedron, and its rays are pyramids—what do you believe? —Claire Kowalchik
Sources:
The Moravian Star: Its History and Origins, a presentation by Thomas McCullough, assistant archivist at the Moravian Archives, Bethlehem
Morning Star, O Cheering Sight: The Moravian Star and Its History by Dorothee Theile