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Concept
Johann Heermann
Summary
Johann Heermann (11 October 1585 - 17 February 1647) was a German poet and hymnodist. He is commemorated in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church on 26 October with Philipp Nicolai and Paul Gerhardt.
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.
In 1602, he moved to Fraustadt, where he lived and worked with the theologian Valerius Herberger, who employed him as amanuensis and tutor to his son Zacharias. Here, Heermann's skills as a poet were recognized and encouraged. Despite Herberger's influence, he stayed only a year in Fraustadt, moving on to study at the Gymnasium Elisabethanum in Breslau, then to the Gymnasium in Brieg in Autumn 1604, where he had the opportunity to give speeches and recite his poetry.
He decided to go to university in 1607, but was persuaded by his patron, Wenzel von Rothkirch, to stay with him, teaching his two sons and accompanying them on a trip around Europe. Heermann agreed, using his spare time to study in the ducal library and that of the university rector. He was also able to publish small collections of speeches and poems, and came in contact with Matthäus Zuber, a talented poet who had also been made poet laureate. Heermann, too, aspired to this, achieving laureation on 8 October 1608 in Brieg.
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