The frakturs of Susanna Heebner

Susanna Heebner also made a series of undated bookplates for five of her nieces and nephews (see Pl. XVI), and a sixth, for her niece Susanna, is attributed to her.(12) In 1810 and 1811 she created a series of New Year's messages for the same recipients (see Pl. II), each containing verses from the Schwenkfelder "lily hymns" by Martin John Jr. (1624-1707), an early Schwenkfelder spiritual leader in Silesia, which celebrate the flower that blooms in Paradise. Although the New Year's messages are all very similar in format, there are beautiful variations in the details. At the center of each is an elaborate, beautifully colored lily, the transcendent flower of the Schwenkfelder faith, emanating from a large, luxuriously embellished heart.(13) Each fraktur is signed and dated on the back and dedicated to a specific niece or nephew.

In a double anagram of 1807, Susanna spelled her full name vertically, following each fraktur letter with a pious text (Pls. VIII, IX). On the right-hand page is a delightful floral design strongly reminiscent of crewelwork.

A relatively rare form of fraktur is the Irrgarten, a medieval spiritual labyrinth full of pious admonitions, an example of which Susanna signed and dated 1808. The following year she completed an even more uncommon form of spiritual counsel, the "Seven Rules-of Wisdom," also a labyrinth. A "Golden ABC," also signed and dated 1809, is a medieval acrostic with a complete alphabet of fraktur capital letters, each of which begins a religious truth. An elaborate capital A, for example, is followed by "First of all you shall have fear of God, thus you will become a wise man." A capital B is followed by "Ask God for Grace at all times; for without His help you are unable to do it."

It is not easy to document the influences on Susanna Heebner's fraktur style. Mary Jane Lederach Hershey has suggested that she came into contact with the work of her contemporary Andreas Kolb, a Mennonite schoolteacher (see Pl. XV). Hershey writes that in five Vorschriften of 1807 and 1808 Heebner "adapted [Kolb's] scalloped inner borders, cut-off corners, a certain 'swirly' use of flower stems and leaves, the shape and verve of his hearts, and the generous use of dots."(14) The similarities between the work of Heebner and Kolb are particularly noticeable in the frakturs she completed in 1808 for her nieces and nephews (compare Pls. XI, XV). Kolb did teach sporadically in the adjoining township of Skippack until 1811, but how the two fraktur artists made contact remains to be revealed.

Heebner died on March 1, 1818, at the age of sixty-eight. In the Schwenkfelder tradition, her favored motifs and techniques were recopied by the next generation of the Heebner family - the very nieces and nephews whom she had memorialized in her work. Frakturs completed in 1817 and 1818 by Maria, David, and Abraham Heebner have survived (see Pls. X, XIV), and the influence of their aunt's work on them is unmistakable.