Frederic Henry Hedge

Frederic Henry Hedge was an American Unitarian minister, theologian, German scholar, translator, and professor born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1805. As a boy he spent several formative years studying in Germany under the care of historian George Bancroft, an experience that gave him unusual fluency in German language and literature. He later graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School and served congregations in Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, and again in Massachusetts.

Hedge became associated with the circle of New England thinkers later called the Transcendentalists and was respected as an interpreter of German theology, philosophy, and literature. He taught ecclesiastical history at Harvard Divinity School and later became professor of German literature at Harvard.

His translation of Luther’s hymn, beginning with the English first line used in this record, was first printed in “Hymns for the Church of Christ” in Boston in 1853. It became the predominant English version in the United States, although it was neither the first English translation nor the only influential one. Miles Coverdale had translated the hymn by about 1535, and Thomas Carlyle’s 1831 version became especially important in Britain.