The Moravian church was founded in the 15th century, and is
considered the first Protestant denomination, based on the
philosophies of Jan Hus. By the 18th century, members of the
church had been forced out of their homelands in Moravia and
Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic), and some had ended up
in Herrnhut, Germany. There, they set up schools where sons
would be raised and educated while their parents were away doing
missionary work. As the story goes, early one December some time
in the mid-19th century, a teacher at the Herrnhut schools
developed an art project for the students where they would use
paper and glue to make a star-shaped polyhedron by attaching
tall pyramids to a multifaceted geometrical solid (image 2).
This challenging math lesson yielded beautiful star shapes,
which the students used as lanterns for Christmas decorations
(tip: it worked out for them, but I wouldn't recommend combining
fire and paper in your own home decor). Subsequently, the shape
came to be known as the Moravian S