Von der Menschwerdung des Sohnes Gottes.
(Reamstown, Pa.): Peter Montelius, March 3, 1821. Item #525
Broadside. 185 x 150 mm., [7 ¼ x 6 inches]. Housed in a wooden frame and appears to be mounted on a piece of paper or board. Paper stock brown with age. Very good copy.
First and only edition of Peter Montelius, devotional hymn on the divinity of Christ as the Son of God. Written in ten five-line stanzas, the song begins “ We sing to you Emmanuel” was faithfully adapted from "Wir singen dir, Immanuel” composed in the 1650’s by the Lutheran theologian and hymn written Paul Gerhardt. Some of Gerhardt’s hymns were used by J. B. Bach in his chorale cantatas.
The printer of this broadside was Peter Montelius, a school teacher, whose parents emigrated to Pennsylvania from Upper Saxony, not far from the home of Paul Gerhart. “Peter Montelius was a German-language schoolmaster all his adult life and served as organist and chorister at various churches whose schools he taught. But he is remembered principally for his printing, particularly of broadsides. Like many printers of early Pennsylvania, he evidently made his own woodcuts.”
Not in Shoemaker, Checklist of American Imprints for 1820-1829. Not in Arndt, German Language Printing in the United States. OCLC list one copy at Library Company, see record number 000001740. See also Library Company Annual Report, 1989, p. 23. For a short biography of Montelius see Yoder, The German Pennsylvania Broadside, p. 298-99. (525).
Price: $650.00