Jesus meine Zuversicht

translated as
Jesus, my Redeemer, lives
Jesus Christ, my sure defense
Jesus, my eternal trust

with
JESUS MEINE ZUVERSICHT

I. German Authorship (Text) 

In 1653, in the midst of strife between Reformed churches and Lutheran churches Germany, electress Luise Henriette (1620–1667) commissioned a collection of hymns to be published by printer Christoff Runge and edited by Johann Crüger, “an attempt on her part to lessen the tension between the Lutheran and Reformed confessions by creating a hymnal that could be used by both.”[1] As Catherine Winkworth put it, “In religion, she belonged to the Reformed Church, but she was in the habit of friendly intercourse with Lutherans, and earnestly desired to see peace between the two communions.”[2] Her collection of hymns was released as D.M. Luthers und anderer vornehmen geistreichen und gelehrten Männer Geistliche Lieder und Psalmen (1653). In the preface, dedicated to Henriette, Runge named four hymns, including this one, and called them “mit dero eigenen Liedern” (“your own hymns”), and because of this, “Jesus meine Zuversicht” has been attributed to her for many years.

Nonetheless, some prominent scholars have been doubtful of this attribution. For example, Henriette was born in the Dutch Netherlands, and a surviving sample of her writing shows her German to have been poor, not consistent with the quality of this hymn. Also, the phrase “mit dero eigenen Liedern” had been used elsewhere in that time period to mean a person’s favorite hymns rather than a person’s own compositions, thus it is believed Runge was attempting to say this hymn was written specially for her, or submitted by her for inclusion, but not written by her. The four hymns did not appear with her name as author in that collection, or in editions of Crüger’s Praxis Pietatis Melica. All things considered, modern scholarship points more clearly to Henriette’s court assistant Otto von Schwerin (1616–1679), who was Reformed, theologically astute, poetically gifted, and close to the electress. Furthermore, Schwerin was credited in the preface with delivering the commission to Runge.

For a fuller discussion of these issues, see especially Fischer (1878), Biltz (1893), Fornaçon (1977), Ameln (1979), and Herl (2019).

II. Publication

In 1894, German scholar Franz Böhme claimed a teacher in Berlin named Ludwig Frege was in possession of a print of the hymn from 1644.[3] Nothing more is known of this source. If this account is true, it would further discredit Henriette’s authorship, because she was only seventeen, still living as a Dutch princess in the Netherlands. Böhme also said the melody had appeared in a 1646 printing of the Praxis Pietatis Melica at No. 182; this also could not be located for verification.

The important collection printed by Christoff Runge, D.M. Luthers und anderer vornehmen geistreichen und gelehrten Männer Geistliche Lieder und Psalmen (1653), unfortunately, has been lost to time; the last known copies were destroyed in World War II. Modern researchers are forced to rely on descriptions of it in other publications.[4]

The earliest surviving edition of the hymn is in Johann Crüger’s Praxis Pietatis Melica, 5th ed. (1653), where it appeared in ten stanzas, uncredited. Although published the same year as the electoress’ book, this source was probably released after hers, or at least it seems as though the hymn was intended to premiere in the other collection first.

For a full stanza-by-stanza scriptural analysis of this text, see John G. Fleischmann (2019). As a summary of the overall text, Fleischmann remarked, “This text masterfully defines the Christian’s hope in the face of life and death on the basis of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. It is based on two great resurrection passages of Scripture, Job 19:25–27 and 1 Corinthians 15:35–57.”[5]

III. English Translations

Most modern printings of the text in English are variations on the translations by Catherine Winkworth (1827–1878). Winkworth prepared her first translation, “Jesus, my Redeemer, lives” for Lyra Germanica (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1855 | Fig. 2). In her preface, she indicated she had made the translations from Christian Bunsen’s Versuch eines Allgemeinen evangelischen Gesang- und Gebetbuchs zum Kirchen- und Hausgebrauche (Hamburg: Friedrich Perthes, 1833). “Jesus meine Zuversicht” appeared there at No. 194 in eight stanzas, which explains why Winkworth’s translation likewise has only eight stanzas, omitting 4 and 5 of the original.

Although her translation is generally faithful, she did take some liberties with the text. In choosing her opening line, she swapped the idea of trust or confidence (“Zuversicht”) from the German first line with my Savior is alive (“mein Heiland im leben”) from the second line, thus making the opening statement of the hymn more directly applicable to the theme of resurrection. She preserved the original rhyme scheme of ababcc. Whereas the original metre was 78.78.77, Winkworth recast it as 77.77.77. In her preface (pp. xvii–xviii), she gave some explanation to her desire to change some of the metres, showing some cultural or artistic bias in the process:

In a few instances slight alterations have been made in the metre, when, as is the case with some excellent hymns in our own language, it is hardly grave and dignified enough for the poetry. These alterations are but slight, and seemed justifiable, since these hymns have been translated, not so much as specimens of German hymn-writing, as in the hope that these utterances of Christian piety, which have comforted and strengthened the hearts of many true Christians in their native country, may speak to the hearts of some among us.

She later changed her approach in a collaboration with music editors William Sterndale Bennett and Otto Goldschmidt, The Chorale Book for England (1863 | Fig. 3), this time with an eye toward making the translations singable to their original tunes:

As a rule, the hymn and tune have been considered as one and indivisible, and the original metres therefore strictly preserved for the sake of the tunes, which would not admit of any deviation without detriment to their characteristic beauty.

Her revised translation, “Jesus Christ, my sure defense,” was based in part on her previous work, but the new metre required a new approach in many places. She also reduced the number of stanzas to seven, thus omitting the original 4–6.

In order for hymnal editors to use Winkworth’s lines but also present a full translation in ten stanzas, some other translations have to be considered. The editors of The Lutheran Hymnal (1941) performed such a task but did not credit the source(s) of the additional text. The full text actually appeared first in a preliminary article given in The Lutheran Witness, vol. 54, no. 23a (5 November 1935), p. 393.

In The Lutheran Hymnal, their stanzas 1–3 and 8–10 are from Winkworth’s 1863 text. Their stanza 4 is unknown, possibly by the editors. Their stanza 5, beginning “Glorified, I shall anew” was borrowed from the Hymn Book for the Use of Evangelical Lutheran Schools and Congregations (1879 | Fig. 5). The first four lines of stanza 6 are from Elizabeth Charles, The Voice of Christian Life in Song (1858 | Fig. 6), the last two lines being a transposition of Winkworth’s 1855 text (Fig. 2), and their stanza 7 is also an adaptation from Winkworth’s 1855 text.

This 1879 text, like the 1941 text, is a compilation of sorts. Stanzas 1–3 are from Winkworth’s 1863 text (Fig. 3); stanzas 4 and 5 are possibly by the editor, August Crull; stanzas 6 and 7 are an adaptation of Winkworth’s 1855 text; and 8–10 are from Winkworth’s 1863 text.

Finally, one other translation worth mentioning is by Elizabeth Rundle Charles (1828–1896), “Jesus, my eternal trust,” from The Voice of Christian Life in Song (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1858 | Fig. 6). In spite of its rarity as a complete translation by a single author, it is unusable as written because of the inconsistency of the metre. Nonetheless, stanza 6 here was mined for inclusion in The Lutheran Hymnal (1941).

IV. Tune

The tune in Figure 1 from Praxis Pietatis Melica (1653) is named after the text, JESUS MEINE ZUVERSICHT. German tune scholar Johannes Zahn had examined both collections from 1653 and provided transcriptions of them in his reference work, Die Melodien der deutschen evangelischen Kirchenlieder, vol. 2 (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1890 | Fig. 7), at No. 3432a-b. The differences are significant even though they were printed by the same publisher. The Geistliche Lieder und Psalmen copy is not in bar form, lacking the repeat of the opening phrases, and besides those nearly identical opening phrases, the rest of the melodies are different.

In his commentary, Zahn explained how No. 3432b is generally attributed to Johann Crüger (1598–1662), but Crüger did not attach his name to any printing of the tune in his lifetime; it was first credited to him in Peter Sohren’s edition of the Praxis in 1668. Zahn speculated Crüger did not take credit for the latter version because it was based on what had been printed in the former publication. German scholar Franz Böhme (1894) said the tune was credited to Crüger in his Psalmodia Sacra (1658). Given all available evidence, scholars such as Robin Leaver (1994) believe the version in the electoress’ book (3432a) was probably not by Crüger, while the other version (3432b) was certainly his retooling.

The first two phrases of the revised melody (the Stollen in the latter version above) bear a strong resemblance to the first two phrases of the tune known as GOTT DER VATER WOHN UNS BEI, which is itself an adaptation by Martin Luther (or his colleague Johann Walter). The version of the melody in Runge’s Geistliche Lieder has some other possible similarities in shape to the earlier Lutheran tune, but whereas Luther’s tune is a lengthy 77.77.7777.7777.78, Runge’s melody and Crüger’s revision are a brief 78.78.77.

Some hymnological sources refer to Johann A. Freylinghausen’s Geist-reiches Gesang-buch (Halle: Wäysen-Haus, 1704 | 1705 ed. shown at Fig. 8) as providing an influential variant of JESUS MEINE ZUVERSICHT. The melodic difference annotated in Zahn’s book and notated by Robin Leaver brings the Stollen closer in shape to the opening of GOTT DER VATER.

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
4 August 2020

Footnotes:

1. Joseph Herl, “Jesus Christ, my sure defense,” Lutheran Service Book Companion, vol. 1 (2019), p. 1056.

2. Catherine Winkworth, Christian Singers of Germany (London: Macmillan, 1869), p. 219: Archive.org

3. Ludwig Erk & Franz Magnus Böhme, Deutscher Liederhort, vol. 3 (1894), no. 2169, p. 865.

4. The dedication was reprinted in J.F. Bachmann, Zur Geschichte der Berliner Gesangbücher (Berlin, 1856), pp. 32-34: HathiTrust; some of the tunes were cataloged by Johannes Zahn in Die Melodien, vol. 6 (1893): Archive.org; the four texts credited to the electoress are given in Albert Fischer & Wilhelm Tümpel, Das deutsche evangelische Kirchenlied des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts, vol. 5 (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1911): pp. 575–579: HathiTrust

5. John G. Fleischmann, “Jesus Christ, my sure defense,” Lutheran Service Book Companion, vol. 1 (2019), p. 1056.

Related Resources:

Albert Fischer, Kirchenlieder-Lexicon, vol. 1 (Gotha: F. A. Perthes, 1878), pp. 390-396: HathiTrust

Johannes Zahn, Die Melodien der deutschen evangelischen Kirchenlieder, vol. 2 (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1890), no. 3432: Archive.org

James Mearns, “Luise Henriette, Electress of Brandenburg,” A Dictionary of Hymnology (London: J. Murray, 1892), pp. 702–703: HathiTrust

Karl Biltz, “Wer ist der eigentliche Verfasser der bisher der Kurfürstin Louise zugeschriebenen Lieder?” Zeitschrift für den deutschen Unterricht, vol. 7, no. 8 (1893), pp. 521–34: HathiTrust

Ludwig Erk & Franz Magnus Böhme, Deutscher Liederhort, vol. 3 (1894), no. 2169, p. 865: Archive.org

Siegfried Fornaçon, “Jesus meine Zuversicht,” Musik und Gottesdienst, vol. 31 (1977), pp. 109–120.

Konrad Ameln, “Jesus meine Zuversicht” [review], Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie, vol. 23 (1979), pp. 219–220.

Fred L. Precht, “Jesus Christ, my sure defense,” Lutheran Worship Hymnal Companion (St. Louis: Concordia, 1992), pp. 282–283.

Robin A. Leaver, “JESUS MEINE ZUVERSICHT,” The Hymnal 1982 Companion, vol. 3A (NY: Church Hymnal Corp., 1994), pp. 590–591.

Paul Westermeyer, “Jesus lives, my sure defense,” Hymnal Companion to Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2010), pp. 461–462.

John G. Fleischmann & Joseph Herl, “Jesus Christ, my sure defense,” Lutheran Service Book Companion, vol. 1 (2019), pp. 1055–1059.

“Jesus Christ, my sure defense,” Hymnary.org:
https://hymnary.org/text/jesus_christ_my_sure_defense

“Jesus, my Redeemer, lives,” Hymnary.org:
https://hymnary.org/text/jesus_my_redeemer_lives

“Jesus meine Zuversicht,” Hymnary.org:
https://hymnary.org/text/jesus_meine_zuversicht