Deutsche Messe und Ordnung des Gottesdienstes (German Mass)
Vater unser im Himmelreich, der du uns alle heißest gleich Brüder sein und dich rufen an...
Our renderingOur Father in the kingdom of heaven, who bids us all alike to be brothers and to call upon thee...
What it is
Luther published the Deutsche Messe in early 1526, collaborating with court musician Johann Walther on the musical settings, as a deliberate supplement — not replacement — to his 1523 Latin Formula Missae. Designed for congregations not versed in Latin, it placed the complete eucharistic liturgy — including German verse paraphrases of the Lord's Prayer and the Creed — into vernacular, chanted form accessible to the entire congregation. The Deutsche Messe established the foundational pattern of Lutheran court chapel and parish worship that would endure for generations and directly shaped the liturgical inheritance Bach worked within. Luther was explicit that it was pedagogical as much as liturgical: the repeated hearing and singing of the Creed and Lord's Prayer in the vernacular was intended as ongoing catechetical formation.
Why it still matters
Luther's German Mass illustrates how liturgical renewal and catechetical formation reinforce each other; its model of embedding the Creed, Lord's Prayer, and eucharistic action within regular congregational worship remains a template for formation-through-worship that any tradition can study and adapt.
Kept alongside
Paul Gerhardt Hymns (selected from Praxis Pietatis Melica)
Paul Gerhardt (1607–1676) authored 139 hymns, first published through Johann Crüger's Praxis Pietatis Melica from 1647 onward, and they stand as the finest achievement of Lutheran devotional hymnody after Luther himself. Gerhardt served as a tutor in Berlin from around 1643 before becoming deacon and then full preacher at the Nikolaikirche in the Hohenzollern capital, and his refusal to comply with Elector Friedrich Wilhelm's 1664 edict on confessional toleration demonstrated how inseparably his verse was bound to confessional Lutheran identity. Johann Sebastian Bach set over 89 of Gerhardt's hymn stanzas in his cantatas and Passions, ensuring their permanent place in the devotional canon of Western Christianity. The texts move with remarkable freedom between confident trust, honest lament, and eschatological hope — making them equally suited to corporate worship and intimate private prayer.
Praxis Pietatis Melica
Compiled by Johann Crüger, cantor of the Berlin Nikolaikirche, the Praxis Pietatis Melica appeared in over 45 editions between 1647 and 1737 and is regarded as the most successful Lutheran hymnal of the seventeenth century. Electress Luise Henriette of Brandenburg, wife of the Great Elector Frederick William, directly commissioned the closely related Crüger-Runge Gesangbuch of 1653 and actively promoted devotional harmony between the Lutheran and Reformed confessions at the Hohenzollern court. The collection transmits Martin Rinkart's 'Nun danket alle Gott' (melody by Crüger) and dozens of Paul Gerhardt's most beloved hymn texts, which served as the devotional heartbeat of Berlin court and parish worship across the height of Brandenburg power. Its melodies, absorbed into Bach's harmonizations and later international hymnals, remain among the most recognizable in Christendom.
Erfurt Enchiridion (Early Lutheran Hymnal, 1524)
The Erfurt Enchiridion of 1524 was the second Lutheran hymnal — preceded earlier that year by the Achtliederbuch (Etlich Cristlich lider) — and contained 26 hymns, 18 of them by Luther. It was designed for singing at home, in court chapels, and in guild meetings as well as in church services, establishing the principle that Protestant devotion was carried in vernacular song. The collection made hymnody a primary instrument of doctrinal formation among literate laypeople and nobles alike. Its influence on subsequent German Lutheran hymnody, including the later Klug and Babst hymnals, was substantial.