Suggested tune: VATER UNSER
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Vater unser im Himmelreich. M. Luther. [The Lord’s Prayer.] This was included in V. Schumann's Geistliche Lieder, Leipzig, 1539, in 9 stanzas of 6 lines, entitled "The Lord's Prayer briefly expounded and turned into metre" (apparently first as a broadsheet with the same title, in 1539; see Wackernagel's Bibliographie, 1855, p. 156); and thence in Wachernagel, iii. p. 24. Also in Schircks's edition of Luther's Geistliche Lieder, 1854, p. 52; and in the Unverfälschter Liedersegen, 1851, No. 572. It is a beautiful rendering, and has been by some regarded as Luther's finest hymn. Each of the first eight stanzas amplifies one of the clauses of the Lord's Prayer (omitting the doxology), and the ninth is on the Amen. C. von Winterfeld, in his edition of Luther's Deutsche Geistliche Lieder, Leipzig, 1840, gives a facsimile of what he believed to be the autograph original draft of this hymn. Translated as:—
1. Our Father in the heav'ns above. A good and full translation by A. T. Russell, as No. 121 in the Dalston Hospital Hymn Book, 1848, repeated as No. 4, in the Appendix to his own Psalms & Hymns, 1851, and omitting st. ix., in Maurice's Choral Hymn Book, 1861.
2. Our Father dear, which art in heaven. In full, by R. Massie, in his Martin Luther's Spiritual Songs, 1854, p. 61, repeated in the Ohio Lutheran Hymnal, 1880.
3. Our Father, Thou in heaven above. A full and good tr. by Miss Winkworth, in her Chorale Book for England, 1863, No. 114. Repeated in the Evangelical Hymnal, N. Y., 1880, and by Dr. Bacon in his Hymns of Martin Luther, 1884, p. 64.
Other translations are:—
(1) "Our Father God omnipotent." In the Gude and Godlie Ballates, ed. 1568, folio 7. (2) "Our Father Which in Heaven art, And mak'st." By Dr. R. Cox, in the 1560 and 1560-61, Psalmes of David. Re¬peated in the English Psalter of 1562, and added in 1595 to the Scottish Psalter of 1564-65. (3) "Our Father! Who from Heav'n above." By J. C. Jacobi, 1722, p. 65. Repeated as No. 155 in pt. i. of the Moravian Hymn Book, 1754. (4) "Our Father in the heavenly realm." By Miss Fry, 1845,- p. 45. (5) "Our Father, Who from heaven above." By J. Anderson, 1846, p. 59. (6) "Father of all in heaven above." By Dr.J. Hunt, 1853, p. 88. (7) "Our Father in the heaven Who art." By Dr. G. Macdonald in the Sunday Magazine, 1867, altered in his Exotics, 1876. [Rev. James Mearns, M.A.]
John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
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