Benigna Zinzendorf married Moravian bishop Johannes von Watteville, joining her educational and missionary work to his leadership within the church.
In 1746, Benigna Zinzendorf married Johannes von Watteville (born Johannes Langguth), a bishop within the Moravian Church and one of its emerging leaders. The marriage united two prominent figures within the Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine, reinforcing family and institutional ties central to the movement's governance and mission.
Johannes von Watteville had been adopted into the Watteville family and rose to a position of significant ecclesiastical authority within Moravian circles. His marriage to Benigna, the daughter of the movement's founder Count Zinzendorf, cemented an alliance between two of the most influential families shaping the church's direction in the mid-eighteenth century.
Following their marriage, Benigna continued to be deeply involved in Moravian communal and missionary life, now under the surname von Watteville. The couple worked together across European and North American Moravian communities, with Benigna's prior experience establishing educational institutions in Pennsylvania informing her ongoing engagement with the church's educational and social projects.
Their partnership exemplified the Moravian ideal of shared ministry between husband and wife, a model in which women held recognized, if distinct, spheres of religious authority and responsibility—reflecting the relatively progressive gender roles cultivated within the Herrnhut community compared to broader eighteenth-century European society.