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Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, heir to one of Europe’s leading families, was destined for high duties in 18th Century Europe. Since 1662 all males in the Zinzendorf clan bore the title of count in the Holy Roman Empire; thus young Nicolaus Ludwig became at birth Count Zinzendorf.

His mother recorded his birth in the family Bible, noting on May 26, 1700 in Dresden the “gift of my first-born son, Nicolaus Ludwig,” asking “the Father of mercy” to “govern the heart of this child that he may walk blamelessly in the path of virtue … may his path be fortified in his Word.”

This child inherited, as is evident, a godly parentage within Lutheranism, and he would remain a Lutheran throughout his sixty years. But history would know him as a Moravian. Yet, if he were alive today he would probably be satisfied with neither. Perhaps the first churchman to use the term “ecumenism” in speaking of the church, this man-ahead-of-his-time had one obsession—the spiritual unity of Christian believers—Lutherans, Moravians, all.

Zinzendorf’s inheritance, spiritually speaking, was that particular brand of Lutheranism influenced by Pietism. The Pietists sought to know Christ in a personal way. For them, walking with the Savior meant being separate from the world, shunning the dance and theater and idle talk. It meant living in obedience to Christ in his Word and loving him with the heart in song and prayer. Their spiritual founder, Philip Jacob Spener, was the godfather of young Ludwig and a beloved friend of the count’s remarkable grandmother, Baroness Henriette Katherina van Gersdorf.

Six weeks after young Ludwig’s birth, his father died of tuberculosis, leaving him to be raised by three women—his mother; her sister, Aunt Henrietta; and his grandmother. Only the latter two were close to him in his childhood for his mother remarried when he was three. Zinzendorf went to live with Aunt Henrietta and Lady Gersdorf on the latter’s estate, Gross-Hennersdorf, 60 miles east of Dresden. He would know scores of moves in his lifetime, but few would be more crucial to his destiny than this one.

The young count grew up in an atmosphere bathed in prayer, Bible reading and hymn-singing. His dearest treasure next to the Bible was Luther’s Smaller Catechism. In childlike sincerity he wrote love letters to Jesus and tossed them out of the window of the castle tower. When Swedish soldiers overran Saxony, they entered the castle at Gross-Hennersdorf and burst “into the room where the six-year-old count happened to be at his customary devotions,” notes John Weinlick in Count Zinzendorf. “They were awed as they heard the boy speak and pray … the incident was prophetic of the way the count was to move others with the depths of his religious experience the rest of his sixty years.”

Young “Lutz,” as he was called, was not allowed to “forget that he was a count” even though growing up in this Pietist environment. He was tutored and trained, disciplined and cultured for future service in the court.

At age 10 Zinzendorf said farewell to childhood. He was off to Halle to attend the Paedagogium of the staunch Pietist disciple, August Francke. There Zinzendorf spent his next six years under the watchful eye of a tutor assigned by his guardian, Count Otto Christian, and under the very nose of Francke himself—he and a few other sons of the nobility took meals in the Francke household. His pious ways and high-born status, together with a rather frail constitution inherited from his father, made him a perfect target for the taunts and tricks of his peers.

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