HISTORY OF THE SCHWENKFELDER LIBRARY AND HERITAGE CENTER
Directors
Andrew Berky saw the need to make the collection more accessible to the public, as well as continue in the tradition of Dr. Hartranft, Selina Schultz and Elmer Johnson’s Reformation scholarship. Berky wrote numerous books (see bibliography on website for listing) and lectured on Schwenkfelder and local history. At this time the library was still working on the publication of the Corpus and supplemented this work by supporting the research of Reformation scholars Joachim Seyppel and John Joseph Stoudt. Seyppel’s Schwenckfeld, Knight of Faith and Stoudt’s translation of Schwenckfeld’s Passional and Prayerbook were published in 1961 to mark the 400th anniversary of Schwenckfeld’s death.
With the completion of the Corpus in 1961 and the library’s endowment secure Berky began to see the need for a re-evaluation of Schwenkfelder history. He saw the traditional, insular world of the Schwenkfelders as shrinking and losing significance. He thought now there was a need to change the library’s mission with the changing times or else it would lose its vitality. There was also a need, in his mind, to develop a relationship with a Reformation scholar who could “properly assess its [the collection’s] intrinsic worth in relationship to Protestant development throughout the past four centuries, and relate its significance in terms of modern theological thought.”
It was not until 1973 that the library found a scholar who was willing to take on the duties, though temporary, of being a consultant for the library. Peter C. Erb, who had originally come to Pennsburg in 1970 from the University of Toronto as part of his PhD research into the role of late Medieval spirituality in the work of Gottfried Arnold agreed to a fifteen month consultantship where he would “oversee communication with interested scholars in the field [of Reformation Studies] and supervise a modest program of acquisition of new volumes…to augment the library collections.”
Dr. Erb left the Schwenkfelder Library after his fifteen months of consulting to return to his tenured position at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada. Yet, since that time, the library has enjoyed a very close personal and professional relationship with Dr. Erb. Though staying here only a short while as a consultant Peter has since been the library’s Associate Director and has published books and articles on Schwenckfeld and the Schwenkfelders (see bibliography). In addition he organized the 1984 colloquium which was organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the arrival of the Schwenkfelders in America, and brought scholars from throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe to Pennsburg to present papers on various aspects of Schwenkfelder and Reformation history.
At the same time badly-needed cataloging tasks were being undertaken by Upper Perkiomen native Fred Grater who started as a part-time employee in 1965 and stayed on for ten years. Fred Grater received a master’s degree in religion and culture from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada and wrote his thesis on Schwenckfeld’s Commentary on the Augsburg Confession. Another invaluable asset to the library came from the local community. Dennis Moyer started at the library as a volunteer with the museum collection in 1977. He provided expert knowledge of local history and a great understanding of the meaning and interpretation of our artifacts and fraktur. Dennis became the Director in 1983 and his directorship culminated with the publication his book Fraktur Writings and Folk Art Drawings of the Schwenkfelder Library Collection published in 1988.