PENNSYLVANIA GERMAN COLONIES
In the early 1700’s, a series of German Second Adventists (pilgrims who believed in the imminent second coming of the Christ) moved to Pennsylvania and founded two important Utopian communes, Ephrata Cloister and The Woman in the Wilderness. Both believed that America would be the land of the Second Coming. Woman in the Wilderness derived its name from the woman in Revelation 12:6 who fled to the wilderness to escape a fiery dragon and wait for the return of Christ. Through their piety, creativity, learning, and work ethic, both communes heavily influenced the formation of the Pennsylvania Colony.

George Lippard. Paul Ardenheim, the Monk of Wissahikon. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson, 1848.

Set nearly a century later than the community at Germantown, this gothic novel draws on the legends of the Society of Woman in the Wilderness and the romantic setting of the Wissahikon River. It adds elements of Rosicrucian practice of which the Society were wrongly accused.

Society of the Woman in the Wilderness
A group of scholars, led by Johannes Kelpius, arrived in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1694, the year their founder, Johann Zimmermann expected the dawn of a new millennium. They took their name from The Book of Revelation 12:6: “And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.” Mystics, philosophers, musicians, and artists, they developed a school for neighborhood children, held public worship services, and practiced medicine—out-going activities for men who otherwise lived as hermits in caves along the Wissahikon River.

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