Quick Facts
Biography
Elisabeth Cruciger (also spelled Kreuziger, Creutziger etc.; née von Meseritz) (c. 1500 - 2 May 1535) was the first female poet and hymnwriter of the Protestant Reformation and a friend of Martin Luther.
Life
She was born into a noble family in Meseritz in Farther Pomerania, and while still a child entered Marienbusch Abbey, a Premonstratensian house in Treptow an der Rega. She got to know the ideas of the Reformation through Johannes Bugenhagen, converted to Lutheranism and in 1522 left the abbey to move to Wittenberg, where she lived in Bugenhagen's household. Then, in 1524, she married the theologian Caspar Cruciger the Elder, a student and assistant of Luther - they had one daughter, Elisabeth Cruciger the Younger (who married rector Kegel and then, on his death, to Luther's son Hans in Eisleben), and one son, Caspar Cruciger the Younger.
She died in Wittenberg.
Works
- For Epiphany - "Herr Christ, der einig Gotts Sohn" in the current German Protestant hymnal Evangelisches Gesangbuch (EG) Nr. 67 (originally known as Eyn Lobsanck vom Christo, first published in Erfurt 1524 in Eyn Enchiridion oder Handbüchlein, an early Protestant hymnal)