Freylinghausen

Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen

Editor of the Geistreiches Gesangbuch; Francke's son-in-law and co-successor

Halle Pietism did more than run schools — it also sang. In 1704, Freylinghausen published the Geistreiches Gesangbuch in this city: 683 hymns and 173 tunes, the most important hymnal Pietism produced.

Faith set to music

The Lutheran pulpit had once grown full of dead orthodoxy; the Pietist movement arose to reassert rebirth, personal faith, and lived experience of God. Faith like that could not just be heard — it had to be sung out loud. The man who put it into a book was Freylinghausen, Francke's colleague in Halle: by then Halle already had a university (1694) and an orphanage (1698), and from 1704 it had its own hymnal too.

Son-in-law and co-worker

In 1715, Freylinghausen married the only daughter of August Hermann Francke (1663–1727); from 1727, he co-led the Francke Foundations together with Francke's son. The hymnal and the orphanage were, in truth, one family: the same movement, running schools with one hand and writing hymns with the other, both aimed at bringing people to truly know God.

Still singing

We sing hymns too when we gather. The kind of faith Halle sang three hundred years ago — reborn, personally experienced, openly confessed — is still being sung today, in this same city, in Chinese.

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