At the annual meeting of the Network of Apostolic History, the earliest known sheet music edition of a (New) Apostolic hymnal in German was made available to interested researchers. It is the first edition of sheet music for the Apostolic Songbook of 1898, which appeared in 1900 but was not widely distributed. It was intended for four-part choral singing as well as for accompaniment by organ or harmonium.
This book was created and published by the Bishop of Berlin, Emil Klautzsch. Around 1905, however, he broke away from the Apostolic Church. This separation and disputes in the Berlin district may have contributed to the fact that this edition of sheet music was not widely distributed and is now extremely rare. Instead, local music collections were created to accompany the hymnal that appeared in text form, such as the Bielefeld Organ Book.
In preparation for the annual meeting, a copy was donated to the Apostolic History Network for the archive in Brockhagen. We would like to express our sincere thanks to the oldest Thomas Kegler and the Apostolic Church Netzschkau for this special donation!
Our second chairman Hans Kuritz then presented the book at our annual meeting and explained some of its special features (video recording).
So that everyone else who is interested can also research the book, we are providing a digitized version free of charge here:
https://www.apostolische-geschichte.de/digitalisate/D0006_Apostolisches_Gesangbuch_Klautzsch-Ausgabe_1900.pdf (approx. 112 MB)
We welcome support for our work in the form of a donation or membership in the Netzwerk Apostolische Geschichte e.V. (Network for Apostolic History).
