“We Thank Thee Lord” S. Karg-Elert (1877-1933) [ORGAN]
Hymn
Measured in terms of the percentage of the population (military and civilian) that were casualties of the war and its effects (like famine and disease), the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) was by far the worst in Western history. Mortality rates around 20% — closer to 50% in some areas. By comparison, the mortality rates of WWI and WWII were more like a few percent overall (with certain areas like Poland in WWII closer to Thirty Year War casualty levels). By this measure the Civil War was much worse than the world wars, but still nowhere near the Thirty Years War. So imagine mortality rates maybe 10 times worse than WWII or the Civil War, going on for 30 years instead of just six. It defies comprehension.
Martin Rinkart (1586–1649) was a Lutheran pastor who came to Eilenburg, Saxony at the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War. As a walled city, Eilenburg afforded some small measure of safety and thus became a refuge for the dispossessed. The result, however, was overcrowding, pestilence, and famine. And armies overran it three times despite its walls.
Eilenburg started with four pastors: one left town to “visit relatives” and wouldn’t return. The other two pastors perished in plagues. So the Rinkart home became a refuge for refugees, even though he was often hard-pressed to provide for his own family. During the height of the Great Plague of 1637, as the only surviving minister in Eilenburg, Pastor Rinkart conducted as many as 50 funerals a day. (Assuming, say, a 10-hour day, that’s roughly one funeral every 12 minutes.) All in all, he performed more than 4000 funerals, including one for his wife. Eventually, the death rate became so extreme that services over mass graves were all that could be managed. The plague was followed by a famine so extreme that “thirty or forty persons might be seen fighting in the streets over a dead animal for food.”
Martin Rinkart wrote “Now Thank We All Our God” (in German, “Nun danket alle Gott”) roughly twenty years into the Thirty Years’ War. Right around the devastating 1637 plague that claimed his wife among so many others. He originally wrote it as a table grace for his family — at a time when one was seriously thankful for any food at all.
When the tsunami of calamity receded, Pastor Rinkart found himself performing a surfeit of weddings — as widows and widowers (and their surviving children) regrouped into new family units — terribly necessary for survival. Sadly, these respites were too soon followed by yet another plague, and/or famine, and/or army. (Although on one occasion Pastor Rinken did manage to talk a commanding general out of sacking his city — one less sacking is a very good thing!)
Pastor Rinkart lived to see the signing of the Peace of Westphalia which ended the war. He died the following year.
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