Elisabeth Cruciger
Elisabeth Cruciger (also spelled Kreuziger, Creutziger etc.; née von Meseritz) (c. 1500 - 2 May 1535) was the first female poet and hymnwriter of the Protestant Reformation and a friend of Martin Luther.
Life
She was born into a noble family in Meseritz in Farther Pomerania, and while still a child entered Marienbusch Abbey, a Premonstratensian house in Treptow an der Rega. She got to know the ideas of the Reformation through Johannes Bugenhagen, converted to Lutheranism and in 1522 left the abbey to move to Wittenberg, where she lived in Bugenhagen's household. Then, in 1524, she married the theologian Caspar Cruciger the Elder, a student and assistant of Luther - they had one daughter, Elisabeth Cruciger the Younger (who married rector Kegel and then, on his death, to Luther's son Hans in Eisleben), and one son, Caspar Cruciger the Younger.
She died in Wittenberg.
Works
- For Epiphany - "Herr Christ, der einig Gotts Sohn" in the current German Protestant hymnal Evangelisches Gesangbuch (EG) Nr. 67 (originally known as Eyn Lobsanck vom Christo, first published in Erfurt 1524 in Eyn Enchiridion oder Handbüchlein, an early Protestant hymnal)
Bibliography
- Mary Jane Haemig, 'Elisabeth Cruciger (1500?-1535): The Case of the Disappearing Hymn Writer', The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Spring, 2001), pp. 21–44
- (German) Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz (1975). "Elisabeth Cruciger". In Bautz, Friedrich Wilhelm. Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) (in German). 1. Hamm: Bautz. cols. 1170–1171. ISBN 3-88309-013-1.
- (German) Carl Bertheau: Kreutziger, Elisabeth. In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Vol 17, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1883, p. 148 f.
- (German) Sonja Domröse: Frauen der Reformationszeit, Gelehrt, mutig und glaubensfest, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-525-55012-0
- (German) Wolfgang Herbst (ed.): Komponisten und Liederdichter des Evangelischen Gesangbuchs (Handbuch zum Evangelischen Gesangbuch, Bd. 2). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 3-525-50318-0.
- (German) Walther Killy: Literaturlexikon. Autoren und Werke deutscher Sprache. Directmedia Publications, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89853-109-0. (1 CD-ROM)
- (German) Elisabeth Schneider-Böklen: Elisabeth Cruciger, die erste Dichterin des Protestantismus. In: Gottesdienst und Kirchenmusik. Heft 2/1994, S. 32 ff.
- (German) Wolfgang Herbst: Wer ist wer im Gesangbuch? (Onlineleseprobe)