Cooperation with the National Library in Riga. Edition of the curriculum vitae of Friedrich Bernhard Blaufuß and conference in Riga

Friedrich Bernhard Blaufuß (1697-1756) received his schooling at the Latin School of the Halle Orphanage and subsequently acted as secretary to August Hermann Francke, with whom he had a special personal connection. Thus socialized in Halle Pietism, Blaufuß then moved to an informative position in Gotha, where he became acquainted with the leading figures of the Pietist movement there. Through his placement as a court preacher in the service of the noble officer family von Hallart, Blaufuß then reached Livonia and thus the Baltic States, which became his field of activity for the rest of his life. Here Blaufuß also came into contact with the Herrnhut Pietism founded by Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, whose convictions and teachings he came ever closer to.

Blaufuß, who can be seen as a border crosser or »tipping point« between the different pietistic currents, has left behind an extraordinary testimony of the search for meaning and truth with his curriculum vitae from 1754, which has been preserved in the Brüderarchiv in Herrnhut. At the same time it is an extraordinary source of social history. This self-testimony, which is especially important for Latvian history, allows a deep insight into the world of thought of a Pietist clergyman who, in retrospect, struggles with the justification of his life's path between the poles of Halle and Herrnhut. The curriculum vitae, edited by Dr. Beata Paškevica (National Library of Riga), makes the transformation of the Halle Pietist Blaufuß into a Herrnhuter impressively comprehensible and captivates above all through the meticulously researched references in Blaufuß' text to the Bible, theological writings and songs.

The forthcoming German-Latvian edition of the curriculum vitae will be published in the context of a cooperation with the National Library in Riga and a strengthening of the Baltic region as a field of research in Pietism studies. This new focus is symbolized by the international conference »Baltic Mission? Halle Pietism and the Moravians in the Baltics in the long 18th century«, a cooperation between the National Library of Latvia, the Faculty of Theology of the University of Latvia, the Francke Foundations and the Interdisciplinary Center for Pietism Research at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, which will take place in Riga on June 2, 2023.