Working group for ecumenical songs
The working group for ecumenical songs (AÖL) is a non-denominational working group for the development of common text and melody versions of German-language church hymns .
Emergence
Soon after the publication of the Evangelical Church Hymn book and in the course of the preparations for the Praise of God (1975) , it became apparent that uniform song versions for the German-speaking area and linguistic revisions of older texts should not be worked out separately for each denomination, but rather a basis for common songs. For the praise of God, the adoption of numerous songs from the Protestant tradition in revised versions was planned.
For this purpose the working group for ecumenical songs was founded. It met for the first time in December 1969 in Hildesheim . In addition to the Roman Catholic dioceses and the Protestant regional churches, the Old Catholic Church and several free churches also participate in the AÖL .
Members
The members are sent by the respective church leaderships, on the Protestant side via the Association of Evangelical Church Choirs in Germany . In 1972 it was:
- Conference of the Evangelical Church Leaders in the German Democratic Republic
- German Catholic Bishops' Conference
- Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany
- Association of Evangelical Free Churches (Federal Republic and West Berlin)
- Association of Evangelical Free Churches in the German Democratic Republic
- Catholic dioceses of the Old Catholics:
- Austrian Bishops' Conference
- Evangelical Church A. and HB in Austria:
- Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Austria
- Evangelical Church of the Helvetic Confession in Austria
- Swiss Evangelical Church Federation
- Catholic Bishops' Conference of Switzerland
- Diocese of Bozen-Brixen
- Evangelical Lutheran Church in Italy
- Diocese of Luxembourg
The first chairmen were Christhard Mahrenholz (Protestant) and Auxiliary Bishop Paul Nordhues (Catholic), the current Catholic Chairman is Auxiliary Bishop Ulrich Boom , and Evangelical Chairman Stephan Goldschmidt.
AÖL work
The first step was the creation of a common song list. This quickly grew from the planned 50 to 102 songs, which were selected from around 130 songs in nine sessions lasting several days until January 1972, and appeared in 1973 with the title Common Hymns. Chants of German-speaking Christianity with the aim of "being adopted in this version in the hymn books of the churches, but also in other collections of sacred songs". Due to the inclusion of more recent songs, it is not yet complete. Both songs were brought into a common, uniform form and those chants "that an individual denomination or denominational group believed they should offer the others" were included in a common song stock.
The revision work begins with each song with a look at the scientifically researched original figure and its seat in life as well as the tradition and revision history. In the second step, language and melody are checked according to criteria of comprehensibility and practicability for today's communities. There are specific difficulties here in the denominationally different weighting of historical forms of language - the songs of Martin Luther , Paul Gerhardt and others do not have the same roots and literal familiarity in the Catholic area - but also in the cultural change of the last decades, which has torn the gap between tradition and today's " Reasonableness "deepened more and more quickly.
The visible result of the AÖL work in today's hymn books is the ö , which marks a song as ecumenical (in brackets if there is no completely identical version).
Song books published by the AÖL
- Common hymns. Chants of German-speaking Christianity. Merseburger, Berlin / Pustet, Regensburg / Evangelischer Presseverband, Vienna / Styria, Graz / Theologischer Verlag, Zurich / Union Druck und Verlag AG, Solothurn, Berlin / Regensburg 1973, ISBN 3-87537-008-2 (Merseburger GmbH), ISBN 3 -7917-0356-0 (Pustet) (published on behalf of the Christian churches in the German-speaking area).
- Funeral chants. Common hymns and prayers of German-speaking Christianity . Pustet, Regensburg / Merseburger, Berlin / Cron, Lucerne 1978, ISBN 3-7917-0520-2 .
- Light, colorful rainbow . Children's song book. Bärenreiter, Kassel; Basel / Pustet, Regensburg 1983, ISBN 3-7917-0883-X .