Muhlenberg

Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (1711–1787).
Erbauliche Lieder-sammlung zum Gottesdienstlichen Gebrauch in den Vereinigten Evangelisch-lutherischen Gemeinen in Pennsylvanien und den Benachbarten Staaten.
Germantown, Pennsylvania: Michael Billmeyer, 1795. (00135/A)

The patriarch of American Lutheranism, Muhlenberg embraced Pietism while studying in Göttingen. He began his career as a teacher at the Francke Foundation orphanage in Halle and was ordained a Lutheran minister in 1739. Three years later the mission center at Halle sent Muhlenberg to Pennsylvania. In America he founded numerous Lutheran congregations and schools, recruited and trained pastors, and organized the first permanent Lutheran synod in the colonies.

Muhlenberg selected the 706 hymns published in the 1786 first edition of Erbauliche Lieder-sammlung zum Gottesdienstlichen, the first Lutheran hymnbook produced in the United States. The exhibited “Muhlenberg Hymnal” is a revised edition published eight years after the compiler’s death.