German Evangelical Hymnal
The German Protestant Hymnal (DEG) was a collection of 342 German Protestant hymns in a binding text and melody shape. This basic stock of songs was decided by the German Evangelical Church Committee and first printed in 1915 as the German Evangelical Hymnbook for protected areas and abroad . In the inter-war period , it was adopted by several regional churches as a main part of their hymn books and was thus the preliminary step to the first all-German and Austrian hymnbook, the Evangelical Church Hymn book from 1950.
history
prehistory
Church songs were one of the most important ways of spreading the Reformation and one of its hallmarks. The advancing technology of printing made it possible for more and more literate people to own and use Bibles, edification and hymn books . The regional church and denominational fragmentation of German Protestantism resulted in a diversification of church singing across small regions. Even the songs of Martin Luther , especially the many songs of the Baroque age, were found in private and regional church-approved hymn books in a wide variety of text and melody versions.
It was not until the 19th century, with increasing social mobility and the relativization of the inner-Protestant confessional boundaries, that the need for common songs in common versions arose. In 1854 the German Evangelical Church Hymnbook appeared in 150 core songs , the content of which was decided by the German Evangelical Church Conference when it first met in Eisenach in 1852. However, the book remained a template and was not adopted for worship by any regional church.
Emergence
The establishment of the German Empire in 1871 and, from 1884, the meeting of settlers from all parts of the empire in the German colonial areas provided a new impetus for cooperation between the Protestant regional churches .
The German Evangelical Church Committee, constituted in 1903, saw hymn book work as an urgent task. When the preliminary work was ready for a decision, the First World War broke out, which made common songs for the soldiers even more desirable. After the book was published in the second year of the war, introductions to the regional church were out of the question.
Usage period
After the hymnbook work had largely ceased in the war and post-war years, new hymn books with the 342 songs of the DEG as a main part were introduced in several regional churches and Prussian church provinces from the second half of the 1920s:
- 1928 Frankfurt
- 1928 Thuringia
- 1929 Rhineland / Westphalia
- 1929 Lippe (hymn book for Rhineland and Westphalia with appendix for Lippe)
- 1929 Evangelical Reformed regional church
- 1930 Bremen / Hamburg / Mecklenburg / Schleswig-Holstein
- 1931 Brandenburg / Pomerania
- 1931 Province of Saxony / Anhalt
- 1948 Hessen-Kassel
These hymn books remained in use until the introduction of the Evangelical Church Hymns (EKG). This happened in most regional churches in the early 1950s. In Westphalia, Rhineland and Lippe, the hymn book with the DEG main part was still in use until 1969 due to a 40-year contract with the W. Crüwell publishing house in Dortmund. Since his typesetting was only slightly modernized, it also differed optically in the 1950s and 1960s from the newer hymn books of the other regional churches in its fracture type .
Quirk
The Pietist tradition is relatively strongly represented among the 342 songs of the DEG , while a number of Reformation songs from the EKG and the songs of the Bohemian Brothers are still missing. The text versions are closer to the originals than those of the Enlightenment and Romanticism . With the melodies, the leveling of the original syncopations and melisms has only been partially reversed. Church tune melodies are adapted to the major-minor tonality .
In addition to the 342 hymns, the DEG included 44 “spiritual folk songs” that were not intended for church worship. This category was also adopted for the regional church editions of the DEG. Many of these songs, which are missing in the EKG or appear in regional sections, can be found in the trunk section of the Evangelical Hymnal from 1993.
structure
- The church year
- Advent (1–9)
- Christmas (10-21)
- New year (22-26)
- Epiphany (27-33)
- Passion (34–55)
- Easter (56-67)
- Ascension (68–74)
- Pentecost (75–84)
- Trinity (85-88)
- The Church and the means of grace
- The Church (89–114)
- Sunday and Worship Service (115–128)
- Baptism and Confirmation (129–132)
- Holy Communion (133-139)
- Christian life
- Repentance (140-147)
- Faith and Justification (148–158)
- Sanctification (159–194)
- Love for Jesus (195-208)
- Trust in God (209–241)
- Praise and thanks (242–261)
- Times of day
- Morning (262-273)
- Noon (274–275)
- Evening (276–289)
- Home and job (290–296)
- Fatherland (298–303)
- Death, Judgment, and Eternal Life (304–342)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ There were Lutheran and Reformed churches, from 1817 also United churches.
- ↑ German Evangelical Church Hymnbook ( MDZ )
- ↑ bibel-gesangbuch.de ( Memento of the original from July 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Christoph Albrecht : Introduction to Hymnology , Göttingen (4th ed.) 1995, pp. 126–127
