CHAPTER VII.
Balthaser Hoffmann, Christopher Hoffmann and Hans Christoph Huebner.
It is our purpose to treat here in brief the matter of how the Schwenkfelder hymn-collection, founded by Caspar Weiss and enlarged by George Weiss, came to undergo a thorough rewriting in point of arrangement, but a few years before it was chosen as the basis for the printed hymn-book. In this connection it will be necessary to discuss the relation of three immigrant Schwenkfelders to the evolution of the Saur edition. They are: Rev. Balthaser Hoffmann, Rev. Christopher Hoffmann, his son, and Hans Christoph Hubner. The matter of the relation to each other of the three folio volumes of the years 1758, 1759 and 1760 is also a part of our problem in this chapter.
Balthaser Hoffmann.[1]
This account of Rev. Balthaser Hoffmann is limited to, first, his activity as a writer of hymns and transcriber of hymns and, second, his studies of hymns. The works cited herewith should be consulted for fuller biographical information concerning this eminent Schwenkfelder poet and theologian. We shall first recount, summarily, his interest and participation in the promoting of the Schwenkfelder hymn-collection.
In earlier chapters, we learned from Hoffmann's own pen, that he was thoroughly familiar with the circumstances of the origin of the parent collection of 1709, and that he himself made a transcription of the same immediately upon its completion. Indeed, it is not unlikely that he rendered assistance to Caspar Weiss by copying hymns for the collection. From his account of both the first and the second collection, already cited, it is also evident that he was in close personal association with the author of the
- ↑ Cf. Genealogical Record of the Schwenkfelders, pp. xvi. and 5-9. The Schwenkfelders in Pennsylvania, pp. 20-23 and 188ff.
