Because God appeared in the dead of night
Because God appeared in the dead of night the title of a Christmas carol. It is one of the new songs in the Evangelical Hymnal (EG 56).
Emergence
Dieter Trautwein wrote the text and melody of this song in 1963 for an ecumenical Christmas mass . At this service in Frankfurt's Katharinenkirche , the Protestant parish hosted the Greek Orthodox parish. Since the guests were not only supposed to sing German Christmas carols unknown to them, the new song, unknown to all and learned together, Because God appeared in the dead of night was meant as an ecumenical symbol at this celebration.
text
The song is designed as a repentance song . The two-line stanzas are always preceded by the refrain:
- "Because God appeared in the dead of night,
- our night cannot be sad! "
In the five stanzas, “Christ's kindness” (stanza 4) is related to the Christian existence in time. After the last stanza, the refrain is repeated again, replacing the words “not sad” with “not endless”.
According to Trautwein, when drafting the text, Trautwein kept an eye on the visitors to this Christmas mass, including members of an American military community and homeless people, for whom several days of free time were subsequently offered.
The fifth stanza with the sentence “If people are afraid of resistance, stay facing them anyway”, Trautwein wrote under the impression of the annual city youth pastors' conference in East Berlin, in which he had participated. The disputes between the young community and the FDJ were addressed.
When the Dresden city youth pastor applied for permission to print because God appeared in the deepest night in 1964 , since the song was to be sung at an Advent celebration in the Kreuzkirche , he was refused on the grounds: "There is no deepest night here!"
According to Trautwein, the phrase “deepest night” was sometimes viewed critically in the Federal Republic of Germany, as was the “mythological speech about the appearing God”.
melody
For the occasion, Trautwein composed a Christmas carol in 6/8 time, which should be easy to learn and catchy. "The cheerfulness of the melody gives impulses not to be arrested by the sad situation."
literature
- Joachim Stalmann: 56 - Because God appeared in the dead of night . In: Gerhard Hahn , Jürgen Henkys (Hrsg.): Liederkunde zum Evangelisches Gesangbuch . No. 1 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-525-50319-9 , pp. 72–76 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- Archive of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland (ed.): The new song in the Evangelical Hymnbook: Song poets and composers report. (= Working aids of the archive of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland. No. 3) Düsseldorf 1996. ISBN 3-930250-12-8