Schüle, [Johann] Adam (1793–1857) Harmony Society hymnal. [Harmony, Indiana], dated 13 April 1817. Kurrentschrift manuscript; about 120 pages in Swabian dialect. 8vo, calf-backed decorated paper. First page long lost, first leaf loose, tear to final leaf, but otherwise in very good condition. Housed in a custom clamshell case.

An excellent example of a manuscript hymnal from the early years of the Harmony Society, the communal utopian group founded by the charismatic mystic George Rapp (1757–1847), written by a well-documented member of the Society soon after the group’s move to Harmony, Indiana. The manuscript, written in Swabian dialect with non-standard orthography, contains a number of unpublished lyrics.

See also our offering of a very early Harmonist manuscript by Jacob Neff.

Harmonist Hymnody in Manuscript

As Richard Wetzel’s work has made clear, music was central to the Harmony Society (Wetzel 1976). In the earliest years, they used Lutheran and Pietist hymns, sometimes adapting the verses to conform with their particular brand of millenarianism predicated on the imminent second coming of Jesus and the status of the United States as the site of God’s new Israel (see Cherry 1998). George Rapp himself is credited with writing at least one hymn.

Johann Christoph Müller (Old Economy Village #617)

The first flowering of Harmonist music is generally credited to Johann Christoph Müller (1778–1845), who was among the original pilgrims who accompanied Rapp from Germany to the New World (see Lapisardi 2012; Wetzel 1976, 20 et seq.). Like many Harmonists, he served the community in many capacities; as a doctor, a schoolteacher, a printer, and – most significantly – as music director. While he led a chamber orchestra and choir as early as 1811, scholars agree that he seems to have applied his wide talents to hymnology only in the years following the society’s removal to Indiana in 1814. The earliest songs credited to him were written in 1816 (Wetzel 1976, 23).

In Indiana, Müller instituted a new policy of offering free instruction in music to any member of the society (Arndt 1972, 254). He selected younger members of the community for the choir – men and women in their late teens and early twenties (Wetzel 1976, 26). Adam Schüle was 19 years old at the time he started this hymnal, and presumably a member of the choir. They would remain lifelong friends.

The present manuscript, begun on 17 April 1817, is one of a number of Harmonist hymnals prepared during the early years of Müller’s choral leadership – 1816 to 1820 – almost all of which are held in the Old Economy Village archives. Of the 76 manuscript hymnals in the archive dated between 1811 and 1889, 37 are from 1816 to 1820, 15 of which bear the owner’s name (For details, see Wentzel 1976, 282-84). In 1820, Müller would publish the Harmonisches Gesangbuch, the first collection of the society’s lyrics (Müller 1820), making the need for handwritten songbooks like this one less vital. Like the other manuscripts, this one includes lyrics only – presumably the members of Müller’s earliest choir were not expected to read musical notation.

Wetzel writes that the lyrics in the Harmonist manuscripts:

are a dramatic departure from traditional hymnody . . . because they show the impact of rationalism . . . which appeared in the German churches between 1757 and 1817. Under the influence of rationalism, the older hymns were adapted to current tastes by putting them into common, sometimes unusual, language. Rhyming was curious or even ignored; and metre became irregular, often approaching prose. The dignity of man, the duty of self-improvement, the nurture of the body and the care of animals and flowers – all traits of rationalism – can be found in many Harmonist hymns of this period. Behind all of this, at least to the Harmonists, was the confidence in man’s restoration to his state before the fall. (Wetzel 1976, 44)

The Christology that marked traditional Lutheran hymnody was replaced by Boehmian theosophy in some Harmonist lyrics, which also drew from such Romantic poets as Schiller, Goethe, Wieland and Lessing. Selections from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (“In Diesen Heil’gen Hallen”) and other operas also appear in the manuscript hymnals. But as Wetzel notes, “by far the greater part of the hymnody of the manuscript books was written by members of the Harmony Society” (Wetzel 1976, 45). Müller, along with George and Frederick Rapp are credited with a number of the songs, but other members of the community wrote them as well.

Because of this range of authorship, the manuscript hymnbooks from this period have overlapping content, but they are not uniform. The manuscripts also differ from the Harmonisches Gesangbuch. A number of hymns that were featured in the manuscripts were excluded from the publication, which added songs not found in the notebooks. Adding to the complication, Müller edited three additional compliations of songs in the 1820s, dropping some tunes, adding others, and changing the titles of lyrics. The 1820 edition featured 254 songs; the 1827 edition featured more than twice that number, dropping over 50 lyrics from the earlier edition and adding many more.

Each manuscript hymnal, therefore, offers unique opportunities for research. One might compare the lyrics in this notebook not only with the early published hymnals of the Harmony Society, but also with the other manuscript hymnals to determine which verses here circulated among the community, and which were written by Adam Schüle himself. For example, it would be interesting to see how many other hymnals include unpublished verses brimming with such physical sensuosity as:

Was sizt dort auf der goldnen Blume

mit glänzend rothen Flügeln, schau es 

ist ein Würmlein, schwarz und braun u[nd] raubt 

der Blumen Schäzelin, rausche du sanfte 

du Rieslente Quelle, rolle die Körner 

des Sandes zur Welle.

and:

Denn ihr blick von dem glück das 

strahlt nun auf & durch jene thauigen 

Blumen Und heitrer süßer Blick denn 

ich dir leise zunik Glänzet mir wie 

Frühlings Sonn: den schönen Tag. Wie 

reine Himmels Wonn.

The language here, bordering on the erotic, is all the more striking for the fact that members of the Harmony Society were expected to be celibate.

A Red-Blooded Second-Gen Spiritual Seeker

The author of this manuscript hymnal, Johann Adam Schüle, familiarly called Adam, was born into the Harmony Society, and spent the rest of his life following a series of charismatic preachers.

He was a middle son of Johann Georg Schüle (1758–1815) and Anna Maria Agnes Reiff (1767–1814). The family numbered among the first wave of emigrants to follow George Rapp from Wurtemberg to Pennsylvania in 1804, and each member signed the Articles of Association in March 1805, shortly after the founding of the (English 2011, 123). Adam surfaces regularly in the annals of the community as a stone quarrier, miller, distiller, and partner in the Phillipsburg Woolen Mill (Arndt 1975, 2: 488, 512, 517; English 2011, 237, 240)

When the Harmony Society moved to found a new settlement in Indiana in 1814, the Schüle family went too. And they were among the Harmonists who followed George Rapp’s adopted son Frederick Rapp (1775–1834) to Economy, Pennsylvania in 1824, where Adam continued to flourish.

Schüle was one of the signatories to a public statement abjuring the Harmony Society. Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette, 7 Feb 1832

But Rapp preached sexual abstinence – an ideal most honored in the breach. When Bernhard Müller (1788–1834), a charismatic charlatan who pretended skill at alchemy and called himself Count Maximilian de Leon, arrived among the Harmonists in 1832 to preach the end of celibacy, Adam Schüle, then 39 years old, was persuaded. He was one of the first among the diasaffected who signed a document of separation denouncing the Rapps. One of the last to sign the document was his old choirmaster Johann Christoph Müller, the author of many of the works in this manuscript. In 1835, Schüle would be among the former community members offering testimony in the painful court case, Schreiber v. Rapp (Ott 2010).

This simple poem in an immature hand on the final leaf of the hymnal is possibly by one of Schüle's children, who was made possible by the abandonment of celibacy

Adam Schüle, Johann Christoph Müller, and the other schismatics followed Count de Leon to Philipsburg (later renamed Monaca), Pennsylvania to establish the New Philadelphia Society. Schüle served as one of the trustees of the new settlement. He got married and made up for lost time by producing six children in quick succession. When Count de Leon announced his decision in 1833 to move the group again, this time to Louisiana, Schüle and Müller decided to stay in Philipsburg, where he had become a leading figure in the community (Bausman 1904, 2:798, 801, etc.).

Schüle as a trustee of Count de Leon’s New Philadelphia Society.  Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette, 16 August 1833

In 1844 Schüle and his family were swept up by yet another charismatic leader, William Keil (1812–1877). They followed him to Bethel, Missouri to form yet another communal religious society, where Schüle worked as a miller until the end of his days (Bek 1909, 270 et seq.; Snyder 1993, 121).

Schüle’s manuscript hymnal thus offers avenues for research not only into the hymnody and theosophy of the Harmony Society but also into the individual formation of a well-documented spiritual pilgrim and community leader who chased the American millennial dream across the Christ-haunted landscape of the new nation.

Selected References

Arndt, Karl J. R. 1972. George Rapp’s Harmony Society, 1785-1847, Revised edition. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

-----. 1975. A Documentary history of the Indiana decade of the Harmony Society, 1814-1824. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society

-----. 1980. Harmony on the Connoquenessing, 1803-1815: George Rapp's first American Harmony : a documentary history. Worcester: Harmony Society Press.

-----. 1992. George Rapp's disciples, pioneers and heirs: a register of the Harmonists in America. Evansville: University of Southern Indiana Press.

Bausman, Joseph H. 1904. History of Beaver County, Pennsylvania and its centennial celebration. New York: Knickerbocker Press.

Bek, William G. 1909. The Community at Bethel, Missouri and its Off-Spring at Aurora, Oregon. German American Annals, n.s. 7: 257-76, 306-28; n.s. 8: 15-44, 76-81.

Cherry, Conrad, ed. 1998. God’s new Israel: religious interpretations of American destiny, revised edition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

English, Eileen Aiken. 2011. Demographic directory of the Harmony Society. Clinton: Richard W. Couper Press.

Lapisardi, Emily. 2012. “Johann Christoph Müller: Harmonist pioneer, composer and apostate,” American communal societies quarterly, 6/3 (July): 179-189.

[Müller, Johann Christoph, ed.] 1820. Harmonisches Gesangbuch . . . Allentown: Heinrich Ebner.

Ott, Alice T. 2010. “Community In ‘Companies’: The conventicles of George Rapp’s Harmony Society compared to those in Württemberg pietism and the Brüderunität.” In Jonathan Strom, ed., Pietism and Community in Europe and North America, 1650-1850. Leiden: Brill, pp. 249-77.

Pitzer, Donald E. 1997. America’s Communal Utopias. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Taylor, Anne. 1987. Visions of Harmony, a Study in Nineteenth-Century Millenarianism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Snyder, Eugene E. 1993. Aurora, their last Utopia: Oregon's Christian commune, 1856-1883. Portland: Binford & Mort.

Wetzel, Richard D. 1976. Frontier Musicians on the Connoquenessing, Wabash, and Ohio; a History of George Rapp’s Harmony Society, 1805-1906. Athens: University of Ohio Press.

Schüle as a community leader in Philipsburg, PA, after Count de Leon. Der Vaterlandsfreund und Geist der Zeit, 21 June 1839