A large factor in their favor despite the Danish Mission College's having already named
Hans Egede as the director of mission work in the territory was the failure of Egede's own
Bergen Greenland Company and a costly debacle involving the royal colony under Major
Claus Paarss. Considering Greenland's sparse population, particularly after a smallpox epidemic from 1733 to 1735 brought by an
Inuk youth returning from Denmark, ironically, one of the very same who so inspired Count Zinzendorf to begin the Moravian Church's missions in the first place the missions were, after a settling-in period, very successful. The United Brotherhood delivered the timber and erected the first church in 1747. Lichtenau was for a time the largest settlement in Greenland. However, the missions were forced to pay for their freight after the Greenland monopoly was granted to the
General Trade Company and the
Royal Greenland Trading Department's
Instruction of 1782 discouraged further urbanization or acculturation of the
local Inuit, whose hunting the company depended upon for its income, and greatly hindered further mission work. Neu-Herrnhut.jpg|A portrait of the New Herrnhut mission around 1770 KRABBE(22) Greenland. The Herrnhut mission station Lichtenfels (11943529563).jpg|Lichtenfels KRABBE(23) Greenland. The Herrnhut mission station Uummannaq at the bay of Nuuk (11727305740).jpg|Uummannaq at the bay of Nuuk ==See also==