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"Now thank we all our God" is a popular Christian hymn. It is a translation from the German "Nun danket alle Gott", written c. 1636 by Martin Rinkart. The melody is attributed to Johann Crüger, who wrote it c. 1647.
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Martin Rinkart was a Lutheran minister who came to Eilenburg, Saxony at the beginning of the Thirty Years' War. The walled city of Eilenburg became the refuge for political and military fugitives, but the result was overcrowding, and deadly pestilence and famine. Armies overran it three times. The Rinkart home was a refuge for the victims, even though he was often hard-pressed to provide for his own family. During the height of a severe plague in 1637, Rinkart was the only surviving pastor in Eilenburg, conducting as many as 50 funerals in a day. He performed more than 4000 funerals in that year, including that of his wife.
During this time, Rinkart was a prolific hymn writer. In Rinkart's "Jesu Hertz-Buchlein" (Leipzig, Germany: 1636), the hymn appears under the title "Tisch-Gebetlein", or a short prayer before meals. The exact date of "Nun danket alle Gott" is debated, but it is known that it was widely sung by the time the Treaty of Westphalia was signed in 1648.
It is used in J.S. Bach's cantatas, such as BWV 79, 192, harmonized for four voices in BWV 252, 386 and set in a choral prelude in BWV 657. The now-standard harmonisation was devised by Felix Mendelssohn in 1840 when he adopted the hymn, sung in the now-standard key of F major and with its original German lyrics, as the chorale to his Lobgesang or Hymn of Praise (also known as his Symphony No. 2). The Late-Romantic German composer Sigfrid Karg-Elert was one of the more recent composers to use this hymn, composing a 'Marche Triomphale' which is a famous piece in the classical pipe organ repertoire. After the Battle of Leuthen in the Seven Years' War, a soldier of the victorious Prussian army started to sing it, and soon all 25,000 joined in the hymn.
It is often used in Christian weddings and other joyous religious ceremonies, and in Germany it is sung on occasions of national thanksgiving.
Translation
Below is the 19th century translation by Catherine Winkworth:
Melody
Below is the melody as it appears in an harmonization by Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV 252).
Musical settings
Max Reger composed a chorale prelude as No. 27 of his 52 Chorale Preludes, Op. 67 in 1902.