Paul Gerhardt

Marking the 400th anniversary of Paul Gerhardt’s (1607–1676) birthday, Christian Brunners presents his comprehensive study of the great and still well-known baroque poet’s life and work – the most extensive such study that has been published for nearly a century. Brunners not only describes in detail the life of Paul Gerhardt, but is equally thorough in presenting and interpreting his work and its manifold impacts. Besides questions relating to the history of Church, piety and poetry, he gives attention to approaches that view Gerhardt’s work under the perspective of mentality, music and social history. The reception of that greatest German baroque poet has hardly been explored yet. In this complex and knowledgeable biography, Brunners focuses on Gerhardt’s reception as a lieder and hymns but also describes his international and pastoral reception, for instance in the works of Philipp Jakob Spener and John Wesley, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Joachim Ernst Berendt; and he depicts the resonance of Gerhardt’s lieder and hymns in Johann Sebastian Bach, Ernst Pepping and jazz music, as well as in Thomas Mann, Theodor Fontane and Günter Grass.