Christian David

Christian David was a German-Czech missionary, writer and hymnwriter. He travelled as a missionary of the Moravian Church to Greenland and to Native Americans. He is known as the author of hymn stanzas that were included in Sonne der Gerechtigkeit in 1932.

Biography

David was born on 17 February 1692 in Ženklava. His mother was Czech and his father was German. He was raised in the Catholic Church. He worked as a carpenter and a soldier. He was impressed by the pietist movement and converted in 1714. In 1722, he helped refugees from Moravia to escape the Counter-Reformation to Saxony. There, he was a co-founder of the Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine, working closely with of Count Nicolaus Zinzendorf. David went as a missionary of the Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine to Greenland and to Native Americans, among other places. On a mission to Greenland, he cofounded in 1733 the settlement Neu-Herrnhut, with Matthias Stach and Christian Stach.
David wrote a hymn "Seyd gegrüßt, zu tausendmahl", published in 1728. Two centuries later, Otto Riethmüller chose two of its stanzas for the hymn "Sonne der Gerechtigkeit", published first in 1932 in a song book for young people, Ein neues Lied, and later in many hymnals. An additional stanza was added to the hymn in an ecumenical version in 1971.