Identify this hymnal, please.
  • deo27
    Posts: 26
    CC Watershed has featured a German hymnal a few times but has not posted the name of it or a PDF. Can someone please identify the name of it and attach a PDF if you can? Pictures are attached.

    Thank you :)

  • Liam
    Posts: 5,627
    A Google AI answer:

    Screenshot 2026-05-19 at 2.47.12 PM.png
    1566 x 1332 - 264K
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,627
    It took 2 seconds. If accurate, which I've not checked/confirmed myself, that's ... impressive.

    As Catholics, it should be second-nature to us to start by asking if we are asking the right question. Questions and answers are a garbage in // garbage out thing. A humanist is well trained to consider the careful framing of questions; the Socratic and Scholastic methods are built on that training. Utterly important for dealing with AI.

    Here, from the typesetting, I started with a reasonable intuition that it was likely a 20th century book (though it could be the last decade of the 19th), and thus provided a temporal band that accelerated the search.

    To the best of my knowledge, no demons were involved in the suggestion of this answer.
  • Charles_Weaver
    Posts: 221
    Looks like slop, which is the opposite of impressive.

    Here is Nun Danket from that very hymnal (1954) edition:

    https://singpraises.net/collections/de/1948-hymns/63332/now-thank-we-all-our-god?edition=1954

    Notice that it's hymn 108, on page 157. Also it's not the hymnal featured in the original post.

    I have yet to be impressed with AI when it comes to music research. Maybe someday. For now it's just mostly or even all garbage.
  • Charles_Weaver
    Posts: 221
    Anyway, it's more likely that it's hymnal that Jeff featured on CCW about a month ago:

    https://www.ccwatershed.org/2025/04/26/pdf-download-extremely-rare-german-organ-accompaniment-for-hymnal-158-pages/

    It's behind the paywall, of course.
    Thanked by 1Liam
  • Xopheros
    Posts: 121
    The answer by Google AI is more than weird: It is unlikely that this is a hymn book of the Mormons, especially as "Nun danket alle Gott" is a well-known and popular Lutheran chorale (it is also in the Gotteslob). And I doubt that the Mormons were so many in Germany in the first half of the 20th century that they even had a complete printed German songbook with four part settings for SATB choir.
    Thanked by 1Liam
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,254
    Going by the number of pages, is it perhaps this book:

    https://www.ebay.com/itm/374775907252
    Thanked by 1Liam
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,627
    Charles

    Thanks for that response! Yes, indeed.