Johann Christoph Schwedler

Johann Christoph Schwedler was born at Krobsdorf near Löwenberg in Silesia on December 21, 1672. The son of Anton Schwedler, a farmer and rural magistrate, he studied at the Gymnasium in Zittau and entered the University of Leipzig in 1695, receiving the Master of Philosophy degree in 1697. In 1698 he became assistant minister at Niederwiese near Greiffenberg; he was appointed pastor there in 1701 and remained in that congregation until his death on January 12, 1730.

Schwedler wrote within Lutheran devotional culture, with the grace of God in Christ and the believer's confident response recurring throughout his work. His 1716 Die Lieder Mose und des Lammes arranged 806 spiritual songs chronologically; the final 462 were his own. Because Wollt ihr wissen, was mein Preis? is absent from that collection, it was probably written after 1716, though no exact date or composition story has been documented. The hymn appeared posthumously in the Hirschberger Gesangbuch of 1741. Its concentrated confession of Jesus the Crucified later attracted several English translators, but Benjamin Hall Kennedy's 1863 version became the form most widely represented in English-language hymnals.