Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf
26 May 1700—9 May 1760
Count Zinzendorf, in The Life of Nicholas Lewis Count Zinzendorf (1838).
Hymnology owes much to COUNT ZINZENDORF. He was the Founder and most efficient Patron of the Society of United Brethren, commonly known as Moravians. Possessed of a remarkable poetic gift, he became, in the matter of sacred lyrics, to the Brethren what Isaac Watts had already become to the Non-Conformists of England, and what Charles Wesley became to the Methodists.
Zinzendorf was of high-born parentage, the Count, his father, having been “Premier-Minister” of the Elector of Saxony. He was born May 26, 1700, at Dresden, Saxony. The learned and godly Philipp Jakob Spener, D.D., Court Chaplain, then in his sixty-sixth year, and the Electoral Princesses of Saxony and the Palatinate, were his baptismal sponsors. His father died six weeks after the child’s birth, and in due time his widowed mother was again married. Nikolaus was then entrusted to the care of her venerable mother, the widow of Baron von Gersdorf, a lady of earnest piety and literary accomplishments—herself a writer of hymns and a warm admirer of Spener, who died in 1705. Under her training, the child became another Samuel, and at four years of age, had manifested a remarkable knowledge of Christian doctrine and love for the Gospel. From his very childhood, he appeared to have known both the Scriptures and the God of the Gospel—Jesus Christ, to whom, in his sixth year, he was accustomed to write, as a child to a parent. His greatest delight was to gather his little play-fellows about him, and to preach and pray with them. His pocket-money he gave to the poor.
From 1710 to 1716, he was the pupil of the renowned pietist August Hermann Franke, at the Royal School in Halle. Here he made great progress both in learning and in piety—occupying many of his leisure hours in the composition of hymns, for which he had a remarkable gift. He founded among his school-fellows a religious society, called “The Order of the Grain of Mustard Seed,” bound to extend the kingdom of Christ, especially among the heathen. In 1716, his uncle and guardian, General Zinzendorf, sent him to the orthodox University of Wittenberg to study law. His own preference was divinity, the knowledge of which he found time to cultivate. Here too, he wrote many sacred lyrics and sought every means to promote the practice of piety.
In the spring of 1719, having completed the course of study, he left the University, and spent two or three years with a private tutor in visiting the principal cities of Holland, France, and Switzerland. The “Ecce Homo,” in the picture gallery of Düsseldorf, with its inscription, “All this have I done for thee; what doest thou for me?” deeply impressed him: “From this time,” he says, “I had but one passion, and that was He, only He.”[1] At Oberberg, he became enamored during a season of illness with his fair cousin, Theodora, daughter of the Countess of Castell, but finding that his friend, Heinrich, Count of Reuss-Ebersdorf, was a suitor for her hand, he renounced his own claims on her heart and hand, and subsequently said to Charles Wesley, “From that moment I was freed from all self-seeking.”[2]
Returning to Dresden in May 1721, he was appointed Judicial Councillor. He edited a weekly paper—The German Socrates—in the interest of religion, and conducted religious meetings in his own house. In May 1722, he bought a large estate named Berthelsdorf in Upper Lusatia, Saxony, and September 7, 1722, he married the Countess Erdmuthe Dorothee, sister of his friend, Count Reuss, a lady in whom he found a most congenial companion. He was at the time “a remarkably handsome man, tall, and exactly of what is termed aristocratic bearing and manners; a ready speaker, with a clear, ringing voice, and graceful and imposing action.”[3]
Meeting about this time with Christian David, a Moravian refugee, and learning from him of the persecutions of the Moravians by the Austrian Government, he offered them an asylum at Berthelsdorf. In the summer of 1722, David and a few companions built a house at the foot of the Hutberg, on his estate, and gave it the name of Herrnhut, “the protection of the Lord.” The settlement grew by almost constant arrivals of refugees and others, and Zinzendorf identified himself with it completely, so that in 1732, he resigned his office at Dresden, and removed to Berthelsdorf to superintend the affairs of the community. Such was the rapidity with which the society grew that as early as 1732, they began to send forth missionaries to the West Indies and Greenland. The same year, he was ordered by the Government to sell his estates and leave Saxony, on the charges of heresy and disloyalty. At Tübingen, whither he had retired, he obtained ecclesiastical orders and became, December 19, 1734, an authorized minister of the Word. He then visited Denmark, Holland, Prussia, and England. At London, where he arrived January 20, 1737, he met with Charles Wesley, Whitefield, and other brethren of like mind, over whom be exerted a powerful influence. At Berlin, May 20, 1737, he was ordained a bishop of the United Brethren, having in June 1736 fixed his abode at Marienborn (about thirty-five miles from Frankfort-on-the-Main), where John Wesley visited him in July 1738.
In December 1738, he sailed for the West Indies on a visit to the Moravian mission in St. Thomas, and obtained the liberation of the imprisoned missionaries, returning in the spring of 1739 by way of England. In the latter part of 1741, he visited the continent of America (again taking England on his way), and spent a year preaching at Philadelphia, Germantown, Bethlehem, and among the Pennsylvania Indians. He returned, February 1743, to England, and April 1743, to Germany. On the revocation of the edict of banishment, October 11, 1747, he gladly went back to Herrnhut, and made it his headquarters. He visited England once more in 1749 and remained more than a year. Returning thither again in 1751, he remained nearly four years, residing at Chelsea, London. His only surviving son, Christian Renatus, died May 28, 1752; and after his return (1755) to Germany, his wife also was taken from him, June 19, 1756. In June 1757, he married Anna Nitschmann, one of the venerable “sisters” of Herrnhut. He died, after four days of illness, of a violent catarrhal fever, May 9, 1760, having almost completed his sixtieth year.
Zinzendorf is to be classed among the most devoted and useful men of the past century. His high birth, his large fortune, his distinguished social position, his eminent talents, and his great literary attainments, as well as his ambition, were all made subservient to the one great desire and aim of his ardent soul—the advancement of the kingdom of Christ on the earth. Herrnhut, with all its appliances and organizations for the spread of the Gospel, is the fruit of his benevolence and godly zeal. The “Mustard Seed” that he planted there in 1722 has become a great tree, and has spread its branches over the earth.
His literary activity kept pace with his Christian energy. He wrote more than a hundred treatises, large and small, historical, apologetical, doctrinal, and practical, all designed to promote his great end. Among his prose works, the principal are “Conversations on Various Religious Truths,” “Jeremiah, the Preacher of Righteousness,” “Reflexions Naturelles,” “The Present State of the Kingdom of the Cross of Christ,” and “The History of the Days of the Son of Man.”
At a very early age, he accustomed himself to poetic composition, in which he acquired a remarkable facility. He wrote about 2,000 hymns, 540 of which are found in the German hymn-books of the Brethren, and 205 in the English hymn-book. In February 1724, he began the revision of the Bohemian hymn-book, and in 1725 he published “A Collection of Hymns for the Parish of Berthelsdorf” and “A Paraphrase, in Verse, of the Last Discourse of Jesus before his Crucifixion.” Two years later (1727), he issued “A Selection of Prayers and Hymns, from Angelus Silesius,” and in 1735, a collection of German poems. In 1739, he published a small collection of his hymns, and in 1741, a new collection of hymns composed by the Brethren. While a resident of London, he printed, in 1753, a collection of 2,169 German hymns, and the year following (1754), the second part, containing 1,000 hymns. In company with Gambold, he published, also in 1754, “A Collection of Hymns of the Children of God, in all Ages, from the Beginning until Now, designed for the Use of the Congregations in Union with the Brethren’s Church.” This was the great “English Hymn-Book,”' a large part of which consists of translations from the German, many of them by Zinzendorf. This was followed in 1755 by an appendix of 300 hymns. A collection of his own German hymns was published (1845) by Albert Knapp.
A large portion of his hymns, both in German and English, have scarcely any poetic merit, “some are fantastic and irreverent, some mere rhymed prose, others again have a real sweetness, fervor, and song in them.”[4] Among them, says Kübler, “notwithstanding negligences of form and exuberance of feeling, are some of the finest, grandest, loveliest, and most touching effusions of sacred poetry.”[5]
by Edwin Hatfield
The Poets of the Church (1884)
Catherine Winkworth, Christian Singers of Germany (1869), p. 306.
Thomas Jackson, The Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley, vol. 1 (1841), p. 115.
Catherine Winkworth, Christian Singers of Germany (1869), p. 306.
Catherine Winkworth, Christian Singers of Germany (1869), p. 309.
Theodore Kübler, Historical Notes to the Lyra Germanica (1865), p. 114.
Featured Hymns:
Christi Blut und Gerechtigkeit
Collections of Hymns:
Sammlung geistlicher und lieblicher Lieder
1st ed. (1725): Images
2nd ed. (ca. 1728)
3rd ed. (1731): Images
Die letzten Reden unsers Herrn und Heylandes Jesu Christi vor seinem Creutzes-Tode: das 14., 15., 16. u. 17. Cap. S. Johannis in sich haltend (1725): Images
Christkatholisches Sing- und Betbüchlein (1727)
Das Gesang-Buch der Gemeine in Herrn-Huth
1st ed. (1735): Images
2nd ed. (1737): Images
3rd ed. (1741): Vol. 1 | Vol. 2
Teutsche Gedichte (1735): Images
Hirten-Lieder von Bethlehem
(Germantown, Pa., USA, 1742): PDF
(London, 1754): Google Books
Etwas vom Liede Mosis, des Knechts Gottes : und dem Liede des Lammes, das ist: alt- und neuer Brüder-Gesang von den Tagen Henochs bisher (London, 1753): Google Books
Des evangelischen Lieder-Buchs unter dem Titel Brüder-Gesang von den Tagen Henochs bisher zweyter Band (London, 1754): Images
Das kleine Brüder-Gesang-Buch (Barby, 1754; also 1761): Archive.org
A Collection of Hymns for the Children of God in All Ages (1754): WorldCat
Manuscripts:
Unitätsarchiv, Herrnhut: https://www.unitaetsarchiv.de
Editions:
Albert Knapp, Geistliche Gedichte des Grafen von Zinzendorf (Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta, 1845): Archive.org
“In preparing this edition Knapp had access to much unpublished material in the archives at Herrnhut, and found there many of the hymns in Zinzendorf’s autograph. But too much of the labour he bestowed thereon was spent in endeavouring, not so much to reconstruct the text from the original sources, as to modernise it. In various instances the hymns are altogether rewritten, so that the form in which they appear is not that in which, as a matter of fact, Zinzendorf did write them, but that in which he might have written them had he been Albert Knapp, and lived in the year of grace 1845.” —James Mearns (1892)
Related Resources:
August Gottlieb Spangenberg, Leben des Herrn Nicolaus Ludwig Grafen und Herrn von Zinzendorf und Pottendorf (Barby, 1773–75)
Archive.org: Vol. 1 | Vol. 2 | Vol. 3 | Vol. 4 | Vol. 5 | Vol. 6 | Vol. 7 | Vol. 8
Samuel Jackson (translated from Spangenberg), The Life of Nicholas Lewis Count Zinzendorf (London: Samuel Holdsworth, 1838): Archive.org
Catherine Winkworth, The Christian Singers of Germany (London: Macmillan, 1869), pp. 305–309: Archive.org
Edwin Hatfield, “Nikolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf,” The Poets of the Church (NY: A.D.F. Randolph, 1884), pp. 689–694: Archive.org
James Mearns, “Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf,” A Dictionary of Hymnology, ed. John Julian (London: J. Murray, 1892), pp. 1301–1306: HathiTrust
Paul Tschackert, “Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf,” Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vol. 45 (1900): https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz11008.html#adbcontent
John R. Weinlink, Count Zinzendorf (Nashville: Abingdon, 1956).
A.J. Lewis, Zinzendorf, the Ecumenical Pioneer: A Study in the Moravian Contribution to Christian Mission and Unity (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962).
Erich Beyreuther, Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf: in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1965).
Hans-Christoph Hahn & Hellmut Reichel, Zinzendorf und die Herrnhuter Brüder: Quellen zur Geschichte der Brüder-Unität von 1722 bis 1760 (Hamburg: Wittig, 1977).
Zinzendorf and the Moravians, vol. 1, no. 1, of Christian History (1982):
https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-1/zinzendorfs-chronology.html
Gerhart Teuscher, “Jesus still lead on: Count von Zinzendorf,” The Hymn, vol. 47, no. 3 (July 1996): HathiTrust
Colin Podmore, “Zinzendorf and the English Moravians,” Journal of Moravian History, no. 3 (Fall 2007), pp. 31–50: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41179832
Gerald S. Krispin, “Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf,” Lutheran Service Book Companion, vol. 2 (St. Louis: Concordia, 2019), pp. 782–783.
Albert H. Frank, “Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology:
http://www.hymnology.co.uk/n/nikolaus-ludwig-von-zinzendorf
Nicolaus Ludwig, Graf von Zinzendorf, Hymnary.org:
https://hymnary.org/person/Zinzendorf_Nicolaus
Moravian Music Foundation: https://moravianmusic.org