Johann Heermann

Johann Heermann (11 October 1585 – 17 February 1647) was a German poet and hymn-writer. He is commemorated in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church on 26 October with Philipp Nicolai and Paul Gerhardt.

Life

Heermann was born in Raudten (modern day Rudna) in Silesia, the fourth son of a middle-class Protestant family. None of his elder siblings had survived beyond childhood, so when the infant Heermann became very ill, his mother prayed that, if he survived, she would pay for him to study at university. He attended the local school in Raudten, and when his teacher Johannes Baumann left the school to become the local pastor in 1597, Heermann's parents took him to Wohlau, where he lived and studied with Jakob Fuchs, a doctor and apothecary. At school in Wohlau, he was taught by Georg Gigas, son of Johann Gigas, composer of two popular hymns of the time. After a year he became ill yet again, and his parents brought him home. After recovering, he returned to school in Raudten. At the house of a teacher, Gregorius Fiebing, he began his first poetry at the age of seventeen.