Wilhelmina Koch

Wilhelmina (called Mina or Minna ) Amalie Koch (née Schapper; * February 22, 1845 in Waldböckelheim an der Nahe ; † March 6, 1924 in Stolp , Pomerania ) was a composer of sacred and secular song melodies, biblical motets, as well as choral and instrumental music. Her melody to Adolf Krummacher's poem Stern, auf den ich auf den ich am ( Star, on whom I look) is well known ( EG No. 407). She is one of only four women whose melody compositions have been included in the main part of the Evangelical Hymnbook (EG). The other three women are Frieda Fronmüller (EG No. 510), Doreen Potter (EG No. 229) and Tera de Marez Oyens (EG No. 427).

Life and accomplishments

Mina Koch was born as the second child of the Waldböckelheim pastor Karl August Schapper (1815–1898). She spent her childhood in a group of six children in Münster am Stein near Bad Kreuznach, in Klein Rechtenbach near Wetzlar and in Koblenz . When she was eleven years old, her mother, Amalie Schapper nee, died. Weinrich (1816-1856).

Her father was appointed professor and director of the royal seminary as well as superintendent in Wittenberg in 1860 . There the family moved into the large rectory on Kirchplatz, where Johann Bugenhagen had already lived and where Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon had come and gone. Mina Koch spent the first few years in a daughter's boarding school in Droyzut near Zeitz, where she also celebrated her confirmation . The Wittenberg music director and city church organist Carl Stein (1824–1902), with whom she had music lessons and harmony, had a great influence on her .

On April 27, 1865, she was married by her father to pastor August Koch (1836–1910) in the Wittenberg town church . Mina Koch was the mother of ten children, two of whom died at an early age.

In 1876 the family moved to Elberfeld in the Bergisches Land, where August Koch took over a pastorate for the Lutheran community and later became superintendent. Here the family was in close contact with the community movement . On the occasion of a visit in 1887 to her brother Karl, the pastor in Groß Möringen near Stendal and married to the daughter Johanna of the court preacher and parish pastor Adolf Krummacher (1824-1884), she got to know his poem “Star, on whom I look” which she internalized very much and to which she composed the popular melody.

Mina Koch went blind at the age of 50.

After retiring in 1906, the Koch couple moved to Wernigerode am Harz. The man died here in 1910. At the age of 78, Mina Koch moved to live with her youngest daughter in Stolp in Pomerania . She died a year later and was buried next to her husband on March 12, 1924 in Wernigerode - on the very cemetery where Adolf Krummacher's grave was located.

See also

• List of hymn composers

literature

• Mina Koch: Memories from my life (Diktat 1912)
• Mina Koch: Compositions (postscript by Martha Koch 1911)
• Georg Bießecker: Article Koch, Wilhelmina (Mina) geb. Schapper . In: Wolfgang Herbst (Ed.): Composers and songwriters of the Evangelical Hymnbook (= Handbook for the Evangelical Hymnal, Volume 2), Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1999, p. 183, ISBN 3-525-50318-0