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Johann Heermann

1585–1654 · Germany · Reformation

Author

Silesian Lutheran pastor whose hymns of the Passion and of trust in suffering were written amid plague, fire, illness and the Thirty Years' War.

Life

Johann Heermann was born in 1585 at Raudten in Silesia and educated at schools in Raudten, Wohlau, Fraustadt, Breslau and Brieg, and at the University of Strasbourg (1609). From 1611 he served as deacon and then pastor at Köben. His life was marked by suffering: plague in 1613, a fire that destroyed the town in 1616, the death of his first wife in 1617, chronic illness from 1623 that eventually ended his preaching (1634), and repeated plundering during the Thirty Years' War (1632–42). He retired to Leszno in Poland, where he died in 1647.

As a Hymn Writer

Heermann's collections include Devoti musica cordis (1630) and his hymns on the Sunday and festival Gospels (1636). He followed Martin Opitz's new rules of German verse, and his hymns are often seen as the bridge from Reformation hymnody to the devotional hymns of Gerhardt. His great theme is the cross: Christ's Passion as the sinner's own guilt borne by an innocent Saviour ('Herzliebster Jesu', 'Ah, Holy Jesus'), and the believer's cross carried in trust. His hymns draw on the Gospels and the Church Fathers and speak with the honesty of one who wrote them in trouble.

In The Lutheran Hymnal and Lutheran Service Book (9)

  • TLH 143 O Dearest Jesus, What Law Hast Thou Broken
  • TLH 144 Jesus, Grant that Balm and Healing
  • TLH 265 Thine Honor Save, O Christ, Our Lord
  • TLH 268 Zion Mourns in Fear and Anguish
  • TLH 269 O Lord, Our Father, Shall We Be Confounded
  • TLH 395 O God, Thou Faithful God
  • TLH 417 How Can I Thank Thee, Lord
  • TLH 512 O Christ, Our True and Only Light
  • TLH 659 Feed Thy Children, God Most Holy

Sources: Wikipedia, 'Johann Heermann'.

Hymn Texts (29)