Pfeil, Christoph Carl Ludwig Von

Pfeil, Christoph Carl Ludwig Von a descendant of an old knightly family, was born January 20, 1712, at GrNlnstadt, not far from Worms. When ten years of age he was left an orphan, and his uncle, the Reverend Justus S. von Pfeil, of Magdeburg, took him into his house. Here he remained for six years, when, at the age of sixteen, he entered the University of Halle for the study of jurisprudence. In the year 1729 he went to Tubingen to continue there his studies, where he became a faithful follower of Christ. In 1732, at the age of twenty, he was appointed secretary of legation of the Wiirtemberg government at Regensburg, and in 1737 he was appointed counsellor of law at Stuttgard. For thirty years he held the highest honors in Wiirtemberg, until, in the year 1763, he removed to Prussia, when Frederick the Great awarded to him new honors. Pfeil died March 28, 1776. He was a very pious man, and the different stages of his life are best marked in his poetical productions and hymns, which number about 940. Not all of his hymns have found their way into hymnbooks, especially as most of them are influenced by Zinzendorf and Bengel, whose ideas are more or less reproduced in them. T'hose, however, which are found in our hymn-books are really jewels of German hvmnology. A collection of his hymns has been published by the Reverend G. Knack, of Berlin (1850, 1853), under the title Evangel. Herzensgesdage. Besides his hymns, Pfeil left in MS. a rhymed translation of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, the Lord's Prayer, the apostolic epistles, etc. See Teichmann's biography in the preface to his Christl. Hausschatz (Stuttgard, 1852); Merz, Das Leben des christlichen Dichters und Ministers C.C.L. von Pfeil (ibid. 1863); Koch, Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenliedes, 5:176 sq. (B.P.)