Heinrich Müller

Müller (Mueller), Heinrich , was a native of Nürnberg. About 1526 or 1527 he was imprisoned as a Lutheran by Duke Georg of Saxony, but was released after the Duke died on April 17, 1539. Thereafter, till about 1580, he kept a school for writing and arithmetic at Annaberg in Saxony. Bartholom äus Muller, sometime schoolmaster at Zwickau in Saxony, in a petition presented to the Elector Christian I. in 1587, and in another petition presented to the Elector Christian II. in 1601, described himself as the son of this Heinrich Müller, and declared that the hymn noted below was written by his father during his imprisonment (see Koch i. 417; Wetzel's Analecta Hymnica ii. 720, &c). The hymn in question is:—

Hilf Gott, dass mir gelinge. History of the Passion. In his Bibliographie, 1855, p. 100, Wackernagel cites two broadsheets as of 15.27. In his D. Kirchenlied iii. p. 85, the earliest source from which he prints the text, is however the Bergkreyen, Nürnberg, 1536, though he says it had appeared in print in 1524 (apparently a mis¬print for 1527). He speaks of the Magdeburg Gesang-Buch, 1534, as the earliest hymnbook in which it is included, This is however an oversight, as it is found in the Rostock Gesang-Buch1531, where it is entitled “A new hymn on the Word of God and His bitter sufferings," and begins "Help God mi mach gelingen." It is in 13 st. of 7 1., the initial letters of the stanzas giving the name Heinrich Müler, and the two concluding lines being "Hat Hein rich Müller gesungen In dem Gefängniss sein."
From the above note it is clear that the hymn was written by a Heinrich Müller, during an imprisonment, and was in print at least as early as 1531. The ascription to Heinrich Müller, professor at Wittenberg, is therefore impossible, seeing he was only born in 1530. The ascription to Heinrich von Zütphen [born at Zütphen in Gelderlaud, c. 1488, became an Augustinian monk, and in 1515 prior of the Augustinian monastery at Dordrecht; began to preach as a Reformer in Bremen, Nov. 9, 1522; murdered at Heide near Meldorf, in Holstein, Dec. 10, 1524] is also untenable, for neither by himself nor by his contemporaries was he ever styled Heinrich Müller, and there was during his life no period of imprisonment during which he might have written this hymn. The history of the Nürnberg Müller noted above is not indeed very clear, but his claim has at least much more appearance of truth than that of any other.
The hymn was a great favourite during the Reformation period, was included by Luther in V. Babst's Gesang-Buch 1545, and passed into many later books. It is a ballad rather than a hymn properly so called, and has now fallen out of use in Germany. The only translation is: “Help, God, the formar of all thing." In the Gude and Godlie Ballates, ed. 1568, f. 22 (1868, p. 37).

[Rev. James Mearns, M.A.]

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)