Introduction

Biography

Freylinghausen stu­died theo­lo­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ties of Je­na (1689), and Hal­le (1692). In 1695 he start­ed work at the or­phan­age and Pä­da­go­gi­um (edu­ca­tion­al in­sti­tute) of Hal­le an der Saale.

He mar­ried the di­rect­or’s daugh­ter and him­self be­came di­rect­or in 1727. He was al­so pas­tor at St. Ul­rich Church in Hal­le.

Works

Freylinghausen wrote and com­posed 44 hymns. In 1697, he pu­blished the first edi­tion of his Geist­reich­es Ge­sang­buch (Spir­it­ual Hym­nal). The 1704 edi­tion had 683 hymns (83 of them by Paul Ger­hardt) with 174 tunes. This was the most im­port­ant hymn col­lect­ion of the Pie­tis­tic pe­ri­od of Lu­ther­an hym­no­dy.

In the fol­low­ing de­cades, more hymns were ad­ded, and by 1741 it had 1,581 hymns with 597 tunes.