This book of Jan Kilian’s poetry and music was prepared for the 200th anniversary of his birth on March 22, 2011. Copies can be purchased at the Texas Wendish Heritage Society, 1011 CR 212, Giddings, TX 78942 through its Executive Director, wendish@bluebon.net. This is the Preface that was written by Dr David Zersen for this book.
There are significant reasons for having doing this publication.
In the first place, although Kilian is remembered in Texas as a pastor and leader in the Lutheran community, there are very few in America who know him as a poet and musician. Primarily, this is due to the fact that Kilian, with few exceptions, ceased to write poetry and compose music after 1854 when the colony settled in Serbin, Texas. Life was hard; there was little time for reflection and little space to write in peace.
Only in recent years has American scholarship, largely instigated by Concordia University Press, discovered the research that had been done by Trudla Malinkowa and others in Germany and in England. Additionally, through the rediscovery of manuscripts that had been untouched in the Serbin library, through copies of editions provided by Dr. Gerald Stone at Oxford, and through a new edition of the Wendish Lutheran hymnal published in Bautzen, Jan Kilian can now be known in United States for the poet and musician he had been prior to immigrating here.
Research into Kilian’s work is ongoing, but it can be said with some certainty that he wrote numerous poems, and tunes to which texts were attached to be sung as hymns. The new Wendish Lutheran Hymnal (Spewarske za Ewangelskich Serbow, Bautzen, 2010) has 19 of Kilian’s hymns.
In the second place, it is significant to publish Kilian’s poetry and music in the 200th anniversary of his birth because this poetry did not exist in English until now. The 1999 book Jan Kilian, published by the Domowina Verlag in Bautzen, and reproducing Kilian’s texts and translations, is in Wendish. This book is based on that work. The Wendish heritage community of Texas which came to know Kilian best (because he lived there for 3o years) will be surprised to read these poems and sing these tunes. They represent a voice from the past that most did not know existed.
Among the difficult challenges involved in preparing this book for English speaking readers were the matters of finding someone fluent in both Upper Sorbian/Wendish and in English, as well as finding someone who could take the English and render it in respectable poetry. Concordia University Press was fortunate on both accounts.
Early on we worked with Viera Buzgova, a graduate of Concordia University Texas whose native tongue is Slovak. She translated thirteen of the texts into a readable English. She has a B.A. in Music and has been heavily involved with organ, choirs, hand bells and early music groups. Viera still lives in Austin, works as a legal assistant and is pursuing a degree in law.
Subsequently, we began to work with Milan Pohontsch, an Upper Sorbian from Lusatia, fluent in Upper Sorbian, German and English, who now lives in the United States. He translated the remainder of the texts as well as narrative and source information from the 1999 Wendish edition of Kilian’s poetry. Pohontsch has Master’s Degrees in Engineering and Economics and is a passionate genealogist and the founder of European Roots Genealogy. He is married and is employed at the Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
The next step in the process was assumed by Martin Doering, a Lutheran pastor and poet. He took the English texts from Buzgova and Pohontsch and creatively set them in a poetic form that attempted to be faithful to Kilian’s rhyme and meter patterns. Doering comes by his Wendish interests naturally, tracing his family line through the Michalks, as well as through other names like Kurio, Mickan, Schwausch, Felfe, Pampel, and Symmank. He served as chaplain and teacher at Luther North High School in Chicago, where he lives with his bride, Sandy.
Significant as is this process of translation and poetic arrangement, Concordia University Press wanted this English edition to include material not found in the Wendish edition. The goal was to let English speaking people not only read Kilian’s poetry, but also sing his tunes.
Our sources of Kilian’s hymns provided hymn tunes only. Concordia University Press engaged the services of Professor Emeritus Harold Rutz, Chairman of the Music Department at Concordia University from 1964 to 1996, to add harmonies to Kilian’s melodies so that they could be sung by contemporary families, congregations and choirs. Rutz lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, Viola.
Many of Kilian’s hymns are found in both Lutheran and Roman Catholic hymnals in Germany today, but for the first time English speakers may be able to use them in their own settings. Concordia University Press commends this possibility to those who have responsibilities in such matters, and the copyright information seeks to make this possible.
Concordia University Press is grateful not only for its ongoing partnership with the Texas Wendish Heritage Society in this and other publishing endeavors, but specifically for the fiscal support in this project from one of its members, George Boerger.
Special thanks are offered to numerous people who helped make this book possible. The research carried out by Trudla Malinkowa and the Sorbian Institute for the 1999 work in Wendish is evident from both the Introduction and the Sources and Annotations sections from that work that are translated in this book. Although this English language edition has additional texts not found in the 1999 work, and provides musical settings which did not exist at all in that work, we are deeply grateful for Trudla Malinkowa’s pioneering work on which this book is based. We are also grateful to Dr. Gerald Stone, Professor emeritus at Oxford (UK), who provided guidance on a number of issues related to Kilian’s texts and melodies, and who checked the accuracy of the English poetry over against the original Wendish text.
The last ten texts in Malinkowa’s 1999 work, Jan Kilian, are not included in this book because they were Kilian’s translations of previously existing texts. From a poetic standpoint, this would have involved taking an original text through multiple linguistic generations (German to Wendish to English), which wouldn’t serve much purpose in a work dedicated to Kilian’s own poetry. We have, however, included some verses from one text by Paul Gerhardt for which Kilian provided a tune just to show his interest in reviving interesting texts through the use of his own music.
Special thanks also go to the Domowina Verlag, which gave us the rights to publish much of this material, and to the Texas Wendish Heritage Society for their financial and collegial support.
The faithful and creative labors of many of the above mentioned people were carried out over the course of a number of years. They all served as volunteers because they believed in the importance of passing on this cultural legacy. We cannot thank them enough.
The creative and collegial support provided by Concordia University Press’s typographic designer, Eric Mellenbruch, has given us confidence and relief each time we have tried to make our way through uncharted waters in new publishing projects. We are deeply grateful to him.
Although we are dependent on the information provided by numerous people, as editor of the project I accept responsibility for any errors that may have surfaced in fact or content.
DAVID ZERSEN
Managing Editor Concordia University Press
2010
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