Jerusalem, you high-rise city

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The heavenly Jerusalem ( Hezilo chandelier , Hildesheim, 11th century)

Jerusalem, you high-rise city, is a Lutheran spiritual song about the heavenly Jerusalem and the entrance of the soul into the glory of the perfect. Johann Matthäus Meyfart wrote the text in 1626. The melody comes from Melchior Franck . The original eight-verse song is contained in a seven-verse version in the Evangelical Hymnal (No. 150), and in a five-verse version in the Catholic Praise for God (No. 553).

text

Emergence

Johann Matthäus Meyfart, Lutheran pastor and professor of theology, was rector of the Casimirianum in Coburg at the time the song was written . The city was not yet affected by the Thirty Years War , which had lasted for eight years , but there was great concern. Meyfart, who later published a courageous pamphlet against torture in witch trials , made the intensification of the religious life and the moral elevation of pupils and students a passionate concern. The academic Wednesday sermons served this purpose, in Latin until 1625, and since then given in German. In autumn 1626 he gave a four-part series of sermons on the " last things " death, judgment, eternal bliss and damnation, which he had published under the title Tuba Novissima ("The Last Trumpet", according to 1 Cor 15.52  EU ). The end of the third sermon On the joy and glory / which all the unselected have to wait in eternal life is the Jerusalem song. In the print version and probably also in the oral lecture, explanatory remarks and a prayer end were added to the stanzas. The print version also offers notes on stanzas 5, 6 and 7 for text deviations “in the song”: instead of “the soul” in the third person , as in the sermon version, it should read “I”, “me” etc. in the congregation chant .

shape

The ornate baroque stanza form is not a new formation from Meyfart. It can already be found in the contemporary shepherd's song Angelica, you beautiful shepherdess . The first half of the stanza consists alternately of two five- and two three-part , male , iambic lines with the rhyme scheme [abab], the second of four three-part lines with alternating feminine and masculine rhyme. The first and third lines are each divided into a two-part and a three-part part - no text word crosses this limit - and thus consistently fit in with the melody inspired by the introductory call “Jerusalem!”.

content

The image world of the song is drawn from the biblical stock of images, especially from the Revelation of John ( Rev 21  EU ), but also from the Gospel of Luke ( Lk 23.46  EU ) and from the Old Testament ( 2 Kings 2.11  EU ). From this, Meyfart creates a large-scale vision of the ascension of the soul and the glory of the otherworldly city of God, which is carried by religious longing and enthusiasm. The song is considered to be Meyfart's best poetry.

history

The Jerusalem song was only widespread regionally in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was not rediscovered until the 19th century - apparently because of the longing motif of the first stanza - and since then has been one of the most important evangelical death and eternity songs. It has been reprinted in countless songbooks for church and home and changed in the process to bring it closer to the respective linguistic usage and perception. Most of these variants have been reversed in today's official version.

Original text and today's version

The song is in Evangelical Kirchengesangbuch 1950 under the heading death and eternity included (No. 320), in evangelisches gesangbuch 1993 under the heading end of the church year , there already as ecumenically marked. The Commission for the Praise of God 2013 included it under the heading The Heavenly City in the common part for all dioceses.

Jerusalem, du hochgebauten Stadt , in German hymnal: a selection of sacred songs from all times of the Christian church for ecclesiastical and domestic use , Philadelphia 1893; Text version and commentary by Philip Schaff
Verse 6 as a grave inscription (left) in the Old Annenfriedhof in Dresden

Original text 1626

Evangelical hymn book and praise to God

1. Jerusalem you high city /
God God / who I in you!
My longing for heart is so great /
Vnd is no longer with me!
Far over Berg vnd Thale /
Far over a flat field / It
swings over the whole
Vnd eylt out of this world.

1. Jerusalem, you high-rise city, will
God that I was in you!
My longing heart desires so great
and is no longer with me.
Far over mountains and valleys,
far over meadows and fields, it
swings over everyone
and rushes out of this world.

So grieved Christians sigh /
when they experience today's condition / misery and misery
where not to look at it. You wish:

2. O beautiful day and much more beautiful hour
When you will come!
Since I
give my soul with pleasure / with joy of joy, my soul: In
God's trusty hands
To the extraordinary pledge /
That you with Heyl anlende
Bey that fatherland.

2. O beautiful day and much more beautiful hour,
when will you come,
when I will with pleasure, with a free mouth of joy,
give my soul from me
into God's loyal hands
as a chosen pledge
that it lands with salvation
in that fatherland?

Now our souls will indeed long
to dwell with those who hate peace:
However, the beautiful day
and the most beautiful hour will come one day
and then

3. At the moment you will get up
bite of the firmament /
When you leave so gently / so whimsical
The Stett der Element: Drives
on the Eliae chariot
With Engelischer Schaar /
(
Which you carry in hands) Vmbgantz vnd even.

With what cheerful face /
with what holy thoughts /
must the soul that has been fetched look at the heavenly city /
when it approaches it?
She can't be silent for the moment /
the heart pours out /
the mouth goes over / she speaks:

4. O Ehrenburgk / now greetings to me /
Thue auf der Grace Port:
How long has I longed for you /
Before I am away!
From that evil life /
From that nothingness /
And God gave me the
inheritance of eternity.

3. O Ehrenburg, now be greeted to me, open
the grace gate!
How long has I longed for you,
before I get away
from that evil life,
from that nothingness
and God has given me
the inheritance of eternity.

But will not stay with them either /
but

5. A noble people and a very valuable
troop of Kömpt then already drawn?
What was in the world / from those who were not chosen. You see
the best crown:
The JESUS ​​Jhr of the LORD
has sent against /
Since she was still so
far away in your Threnen-Land.

4. What kind of people, what kind of noble crowd
has already come there? I see what was
chosen in the world
: they are the crown that
Jesus
sent to meet me, the Lord ,
when I was still so far away
in my land of tears.

6. Prophets great and patriarchs high
Also Christians in the community /
The weyland there wore the Creutzes yoke and
the tyrant Pein
Shawt They float in honor In
freedom everywhere
With clarity brightly vmbend
With sun-like rays.

5. Prophets great and patriarchs high,
also Christians in general,
all who once bore the yoke of the cross
and the torment of the tyrants,
I watch floating in honor,
in freedom everywhere,
brightly surrounded with clarity,
with a ray of sunlight.

7. When at last she has arrived
at the beautiful
paradise /
The mind is filled with the highest joy / The mouth of praise and praise:
The Hallelujah pure
man is played in holiness /
The Hosanna fine
without end in eternity.

6. When I finally arrive
in the beautiful
paradise, the mind and
mouth are filled with great joy with praise and praise.
The Hallelujah pure
one plays in holiness,
the Hosanna fine
without end in eternity

8. With cheering sound! with instruments, yes!
Open choirs without numbers!
That of the sound and of the sweet clay
stirs the Frewden Hall!
With a hundred thousand tongues /
with voices much more!
As sung from the beginning
The Heavenly Army!

7. with the sound of jubilation, beautiful instruments,
in choirs without number,
that the joyous hall stirs with the sound and the sweet tone
,
with a hundred thousand tongues,
with voices even more,
as if
the great heavenly army sung from the beginning .

Whoever desires to go there /
and now only sings one note along /
or wants to shut the door in the house of our God /
say in the heart amen.
But help the Lord Jesus Christ / so
that many should grasp this eternal joy / be
remembered at your deathbed /
and through this lovely contemplation here struggle knightly /
through death and life to you / Amen / O Jesus / Amen.

Melody and arrangements

The melody ? / i "applies to one of the most beautiful German chorales". It is unique because of its beginning, the triad descent from the upper to the lower keynote C. In the tension space that this opens up, as it were between heaven and earth, the other lines swing out in lively motion. Like the text, the melody has also been handed down in different versions. Audio file / audio sample

The melody appeared, in a preliminary form and without the composer's name, for the first time in print in the Erfurt hymn book from 1663. Melchior Franck is generally regarded as the author. However, there is no definite proof of his authorship. Even Johann Dilliger , 1625-1632 Kantor at the high school Casimirianum, the composer could be.

Ernst Flügel , Wilhelm Rudnick , Georg Schumann , Max Reger , Sigfrid Karg-Elert , Karl Hoyer , Rudolf Mauersberger , Johann Nepomuk David and others have arranged the Jerusalem melody in their own works. However, there are no arrangements from the Baroque period.

translation

Catherine Winkworth translated the song into English in 1858 under the title Jerusalem, Thou City Fair and High .

literature

Web links

Commons : Jerusalem, you high-rise city  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kornemann, p. 53
  2. ↑ Cf. the third stanza of Eichendorff's Mondnacht .
  3. ↑ a b Website for the Colmar hymn book
  4. ↑ This is criticized by Philip Schaff , who changes himself more than today's hymn books, see picture file hymn book 1893 .
  5. ↑ After the first printing in 1626, reproduced in: Albrecht Schöne (Ed.): Das Zeitalter des Barock. Texts and certificates . Munich 1988, pp. 200–202 ( books.google.de )
  6. ↑ EKG "longingly"
  7. ↑ ECG "flat field"
  8. ↑ a b This stanza is missing in the praise of God.
  9. ↑ ECG exclamation mark
  10. ↑ Original marginal note on verse 5:
    (Look at them)
    in the song:
    I see.
    (You)
    singing to
    Me.
    (You) in the
    Ges.I.
    (Yours)
    in the song of
    mine.
  11. ↑ ECG "from"
  12. ^ "Kron" as German translation of the Latin corona Schar, assembly; EKG "I see, the best Kron"
  13. ↑ Original marginal note on verse 6:
    (Schawt them)
    in Ges.Sch.
    I.
  14. ↑ EKG "those times there"
  15. ↑ Original marginal note on verse 7:
    (She is) in the
    singing / I
    arrived
    .
  16. ↑ Ps 84.11  LUT
  17. ↑ Martin Luther : Come, Holy Spirit, Lord God , Str. 3
  18. ↑ Philip Schaff, see picture file Gesangbuch 1893; Kornemann, p. 54: "One of the most beautiful melodies in the hymnal."
  19. ↑ Facsimile Erfurt hymn book 1663
  20. ↑ Kornemann, p. 54
  21. ↑ Jerusalem, Thou City Fair and High on Lutheran-Hymnal.com