GERHARDT, PAUL (1607-1676), German hymn-writer, was born at Grafenhainichen on March 12, 1607. After tutoring in Berlin, in 1657 he became "diaconus" to the Nicolaikirche there. Owing to his uncompromising Lutheranism he refused to accept the Elector Frederick William's "syncretistic" edict of 1664, and was deprived of his office in 1666. In spite of a public petition in 1667, he refused to resume an office which, he thought, implied at least a tacit repudiation of the Formula Concordiae. In 1668 he was appointed archdeacon of Liibben, Saxe-Mersburg, where he died on June 7, 1676. Gerhardt is the greatest German hymn-writer of the 17th century. Many of his best-known hymns first appeared in church hymnbooks, as for example in the Brandenburg hymnal in 1658; others in Johann Cruger's Geist liche Kirchenmelodien (1649), and Praxis pietatis melica (1656). The first complete set is the Geistliche Andachten (1666-67), edited by Ebeling, music director in Berlin.
The life of Gerhardt has been written by Roth (1829), by Lang becker (1841) , by Schultz (1842) , by Wildenhahn (1845), by Bach mann (1863), and by H. Petrich (1914) ; also by Kraft in Ersch u. Gruber's Allg. Encycl. (1855) . The best modern edition of the hymns, published by Wackernagel in 1843, has often been reprinted (Eng. trs. by Kelly, Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs, 1867) . See also T. B. Hewitt, Paul Gerhardt as a hymn-writer and his influence on English Hymnody (New Haven, U.S. 1918) .