GUIDING STAR (Freylinghausen)

Composer: Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen

Freylinghausen, Johann Anastasius, son of Dietrich Freylinghausen, merchant and burgomaster at Gandersheim, Brunswick, was born at Gandersheim, Dec. 2, 1670. He entered the University of Jena at Easter, 1689. Attracted by the preaching of A. H. Francke and J. J. Breithaupt, he removed to Erfurt in 1691, and at Easter, 1692, followed them to Halle. About the end of 1693 he returned to Gandersheim, and employed himself as a private tutor. In 1695 he went to Glaucha as assistant to Francke; and when Francke became pastor of St. Ulrich's, in Halle,1715, Freylinghausen became his colleague, and in the same year married his only daughter. In 1723 he became also sub-director of the Paedagogium and the Orphanage; and after Francke's death in 1727,… Go to person page >

From Freylinghausen's Neues Geist-reiches Gesang-buch (Halle, 1714). See also Johannes Zahn, Die Melodien der deutschen evangelischen Kirchenlieder, vol. 4 (1891), no. 6373, for the history of this melodic variant.