Leave God to order all your ways

Catherine Winkworth made two translations of Georg Neumark’s Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten, of which this is the former and now the lesser known; some form of If thou but suffer God to guide thee has overtaken it in other books. The first was published in her 1855 Lyra Germanica, the second in The Chorale Book for England in 1863. But the original German dates from 1641, when its author had faced apparent disaster by being robbed by highwaymen as he travelled to Königsberg, on his way to matriculate at the university. Left with virtually nothing except his prayer book and some money sewn into his clothes, he could no longer proceed to his studies. He had great difficulty finding a job in any of the nearby towns, until at last he found work as a tutor to a family in Keil which enabled him eventually to resume his academic course. At this point, out of gratitude to God, he wrote the hymn for which he is best known. Changes from the first English version come at 1.2 (for ‘and hope in him whate’er betide’); 2.3,5 (‘to take whate’er his gracious will/ … nor doubt our inmost needs …’); and 3.1,4 (‘… swerve not … / … so shall they be fulfilled in thee.’ These revisions are made for Praise!

For the tune ISAAC (=MOZART), see the notes to 734 where it is arranged in the key of C major.

b Langensalza, Thuringia, Germany 1621, d Weimar, Germany 1681. Educated at the Gymnasia of Schleusingen and Gotha. In autumn 1641, aged 20, he was travelling with a group of merchants to Leipzig (for the Michaelmas Fair), and thence to Lübeck, in order to matriculate at the Univ of Königsberg. Just after Magdeberg, however, some highwaymen (muggers?) attacked and robbed the group of all they possessed. Left with virtually nothing except a Prayer Book and a few coins sewn into his coat-lining, he now spent much time in an anxious and fruitless quest for work in many places. At last the chief pastor of the town of Kiel took pity on him, finding him employment as a private tutor to the family of Judge Hemming. By strict economies he managed to save enough to cover his university fees, and eventually reached his original destination where he was able to study literature and law, starting in June 1643 and adding poetry to his private studies. 3 years later, however, further unemployment and poverty awaited him when in 1646 a house fire destroyed his possessions. In 1648 he set out on further travels, with only occasional opportunities for work, via Warsaw, Thorn, Danzig, Hamburg and eventually home to Thuringia. Finally in 1652 he found employment with Duke Johann Ernst of Sachse-Weimar, first as court poet and later as secretary to his archives and as Weimar’s librarian and registrar. In 1653 he joined an influential literary circle, the Fruit-Bearing Society, becoming its secretary in 1656 and chronicler in 1668. He also belonged to another group of poets, ‘The Pegnitz Shepherd and Flower Order’. This came to an end when in 1680–81, aged 60 and in the final year of his life, he became blind. His verse, sacred and secular, appeared first in 1657; he published 3 hymn collections, and some of his 34 known hymns, 3 of which were in much demand, clearly reflect the various hardships he endured. This is certainly true of the one made widely known through its (2nd) English version by Catherine Winkworth, qv: If thou but suffer God to guide thee. Other translations of this continue to appear. His specifically Christian verse is generally considered superior to his secular poetry and has certainly outlasted it. No.761.
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b Ely Place, Saffron Hill liberty, Holborn, London 1827, d Monnetier, Savoy, France 1878. Her early life was spent in the Manchester area, where with her eldest sister Susanna she was educated; in 1850 she moved with her silk-manufacturer father to the suburb of Alderley Edge, encouraged in her German studies by (the Rev) William and Mrs Gaskell, as later by the Prussian Minister in London, Baron Karl von Bunsen. She made the first and most decisive of 4 visits to Germany in 1845–46, mainly in Dresden. After a business recession she settled with her father and sisters at Clifton, Bristol, in 1862. Here she pioneered the higher education of women, as a governor of Red Maids’ Sch and founder of Clifton High Sch for Girls, member of the Clifton Assn for the Higher Education of Women and the council of Cheltenham Ladies’ Coll, envisaging eventually a university college for Bristol. Most significantly, she did for German hymns what J M Neale (qv) had done for Lat and Gk. She translated over 400 hymns by 170 authors, mainly from Bunsen’s collection of texts, combining faithfulness to the original with fluency in English. Her 2 series of Lyra Germanica: Hymns for the Sundays and Chief Festivals of the Christian Year (1855) ran to 35 edns, the title complementing Susanna’s 1854 translation of Theologia Germanica. These came without tunes; not being a musician, CW did not attempt to reproduce German metres in English. The Baron, however, urged the need of music; so with editorial help from the leading composer Sterndale Bennett and the fine musicologist Otto Goldschmidt, husband of the international soprano Jenny Lind, she produced in 1863 the influential Chorale Book for England. This also had a ‘church’s year’ arrangement, and was followed in 1869 by Christian Singers of Germany (‘a landmark in the Victorian reception of German culture’).

More than most, Winkworth understood the genius of the two languages and styles of worship, and also translated 2 German biographies. Though informed by varied theological influences she remained ‘a firm if sometimes unsatisfied member of the CofE’ (P Skrine 1991, who described her as ‘perhaps the best known and most effective mediator between the German and English-speaking worlds in the second half of the 19th cent’). She travelled to Switzerland in search of better health, but died at the age of 50 from a sudden heart attack near Geneva. She translated at least 27 of P Gerhardt’s hymns, 4 of them in two versions. Two American Evangelical Lutheran hymnals from the 1990s included respectively nearly 60 and nearly 80 of her texts and versions; 21 are included in the Moravian Book of Worship (USA, 1995), 19 in Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), 17 in the 1965 Anglican Hymn Book, 15 in The BBC Hymn Book (1951), 8 in Hymns of Faith (1964) and 6 in the Scottish Church Hymnary 4th edn (2005). Susanna had begun to collect Catherine’s letters, but many had been destroyed and she died with the work unfinished. One surviving letter from CW to SW relates a dinner with some distinguished VIPs: ‘I had to talk politics in Italian and French, and felt I was making an awful hash of my languages!’. Another describes in detail at extraordinarily vivid dream about St Chrysostom; others from the 1870s express great anxiety about the threat of war. In 1908 Memorials of two Sisters was published by their niece Margaret J Shaen. See also the HS Occasional Paper, 2nd series no.2, Susanna and Catherine Winkworth (1992); and Robin A Leaver’s study of CW’s translations (1978). Julian, endorsed by T B Hewitt in 1918, rates her as ‘the foremost in rank and popularity’ among translators of German hymns, a position which has not been seriously challenged. Nos.161, 196, 349, 457, 556, 730, 761, 845.