Leonhard Sturm

Sturm, Leonhard, became Master in the Latin School, and Cantor (precentor) in St. George's Church, at Nördlingen, Bavaria, in 1635. In the church registers at Nördlingen he is described as "of Fehlburg in the Pfalz" (? Pfalzburg in Alsace). He died at Nördlingen, Sept. 11, 1682, aged 74 (Blätter für Hymnologie, 1886, p. 62).

Eight hymns, by Sturm, are included in the Appendix to the Newvermehrte christliche Seeleharpf, Onoltzbach (Ansbach), 1664-65 [Heidelberg University Library]; and eleven in the Nördlingischer Kirchen-Schall, oder Geistliche Seelen-Lust, Nördlingen, 1676 [Wernigerode Library].

Only one of these has passed into English, viz.,
Ich fahr dahin mit Freuden. For the Dying. The first stanza is taken almost verbatim from a piece by Martin Rinkart. Sturm added to this seven stanzas, which carry out Rinkart's idea without borrowing almost anything more from him. The initial letters of Sturm's eight stanzas form the acrostic Jacobina; this being the name of his second wife, Maria Jacobina, to whom he was married in 1646, and who died in 1687. Possibly the hymn was written at some period when she was dangerously ill. Sturm's hymn appeared in the Nördlingen Gesang-Buch, 1676. Translated as:—
I journey forth rejoicing. This is a somewhat free version of st. i.-iii., vi., vii , by Miss Borthwick, in Hymns from the Land of Luther, First Ser., 1854, p. 71. The translations of st. iii., vi., vii., beginning, "Why thus so sadly weeping," are No. 63, in J. H. Wilson's Service of Praise, 1865. [Rev. James Mearns, M.A.]

-- Excerpts from John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)