Heaven on Earth: George Rapp on the Destiny of Man

Abstract

Johann George Rapp (1757-1847), a radical Pietist from the duchy of Württemberg, Germany, brought his followers to the United States in the early nineteenth century and officially founded the Harmony Society in 1805. Known for their practice of celibacy and communal living, the Har-mony Society succeeded as an economic and social utopia in three succes-sive settlements at Harmonie, Pennsylvania; Harmonie, Indiana; and Economy, Pennsylvania before finally dissolving in 1905. To date, most scholars have focused either on the Harmony Society as an American uto-pia, or on the influences behind the thought of Rapp. They have over-looked Rapp’s only prose writing directed at an outside audience, Gedanken über die Bestimung des Menschen: besonders in Hinsicht der gegenwärtigen Zeit [Thoughts on the Destiny of Man: Particularly With Reference to the Present Times] (1824). In this essay, I examine the Eng-lish translation as a piece of religious prose and offer a close analysis of its primary argument as well as its use of recurring figures of speech. I focus especially on Rapp’s use of mechanical, horticultural, and alchemical met-aphors in the service of his optimistic, postmillennial claim that the destiny of man is nothing less than a “golden age” of selfless Christian communal living. Led by Rapp’s Harmony Society, this Christian community would be a “resemblance of heaven” and could eventually save all of humankind.