Johann Hess

Hesse, Johann, D.D., son. of Johann von Hesse, a merchant of Nürnberg, was born at Nürnberg, Sept. 21 or 23, 1490. He attended the Universities of Leipzig (1506), Wittenberg, where he graduated M.A., 1511, and heard lectures froin Luther and Johann v. Staupitz; Bologna and Ferrara (D.D. at Ferrara, 1519). During his residence in Italy he gained an insight into the corruptions of the Church in that country, and on his return home in 1520 he sided more and more with the party of Reform. He had been appointed Canon of Neisse in Silesia in 1515, and was in 1520 ordained priest at Breslau. He acted for some time as a Provost of the Church of St. Mary and St. George, at Oels, and was then summoned to Breslau, in 1521, to preach as a Canon of the Cathedral. He did not at first declare himself openly for the Reformation; but on a visit to Nurnberg in the spring of 1523, preached a sermon in St. Sebald's Church, in which he proclaimed himself on the side of the Reformers. On this he was invited by 'the magistrates of Breslau to become Evangelical pastor of St. Mary Magdalene's Church there; and in spite of the opposition of the Pope and of King Sigismund of Poland, he was formally installed, Oct. 21, 1523, as the first Evangelical pastor elected by the people in Silesia. He died at Breslau, Jan. 6, 1547. (Koch, i. 360-367; Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, xii. 283-284, &c.) Two hymns have been ascribed to Hesse, one of which has passed into English, viz.:—
O Welt, ich muss dich lassen. For the Dying. Wackernagel, iii. p. 952, gives this in 10 stanzas of 6 lines from a broadsheet printed at Nürnberg, c. 1555, and from a Nürnberg Gesangbuch of 1569. It is also in the Unverfälschter Liedersegen, 1851, No. 839. Lauxmann, in Koch, viii. 589, says that according to tradition it was written as a dying song for criminals on their way to execution, in whose welfare Hesse had begun to interest himself as early as 1526. In Jeremias Weber's Gesangbuch, Leipzig, 1638, p. 110, it is entitled, "A funeral hymn for a person who on account of his misdeeds is lawfully and justly brought from life to death, whose departure is publicly shown that every¬one may take it to heart." Its popularity was greatly aided by the beautiful melody to which it is set. This is given in its original form by Miss Winkworth, and in Hymns Ancient & Modern (No. 86) is called Innspruck. It appears in G. Forster's Ausszug guter alter und newer Teutscher liedlein, Nürnberg, 1539, in a four-part setting by Heinrich Isaak (b. c. 1440, Capellmeister to the Emperor Maximilian I.) to the words of the travelling artisan's song " Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen." This hymn is translated as:—
0 world, I now must leave thee, a good translation of stanzas i., iv.-viii., by Miss Winkworth, as No. 189 in her Chorale Book for England, 1863, repeated, omitting st. vi., in the Ohio Luth. Hymnal, 1880. Another translation is:—"0 world, I leave thee; far I go," by Dr. G. Walker, 1860, p. 161.
Another form of the hymn is that with the same first line given in Heinrich Knaust's GassenJuiwer, Renter und Berpliedlin christlich, moraliter unnd sittlich verendert, Frankfurt-ani-Main, 1571, where it is in 3 stanzas, signed "D. H. K." (i.e. Dr. Heinrich Knaust), and entitled, "Issbruck ich muss dich lassen christianly and morally altered." Thence in Wackernagel, iv. p. 781. The only translation of this form is, "O world, I must forsake thee," by Miss Winkworth, 1869, p. 91. [Rev. James Mearns, M.A.]

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology