Bickel, Johann Daniel Carl

Protestant pastor, songwriter

Born: 26.06.1737 in Wiesbaden

Died: 28.06.1809 in Biebrich am Rhein

1754/55 at the grammar school in Idstein, after studying theology Bickel was a teacher at the orphanage in Wiesbaden from 1758 and vicar, from 1763 chaplain in Mosbach and from 1776 Nassau-Usingian court preacher and superintendent in Biebrich as well as prince educator. From 1787, he served as the last pastor presented by the Eberbach/Rheingau monastery in Wiesbaden. From 1792 he was a consistorial councillor and superintendent in Usingen.

On 14.01.1809, the Nassau government commissioned Bickel to draw up a plan "on how the school and education system ... should be organized as a common one for Protestants and Catholics according to the spirit of the times". Theologically, Bickel saw the purpose of Christianity as being "a universal religion for mankind" that could withstand "the test of Enlightenment reason".

In 1779, he published the Nassau-Usingische Gesangbuch (Wiesbaden 1779), which was used in Nassau-Usingen, Nassau-Wiesbaden and in 1794 in Nassau-Weilburg and only included songs that presented "the biblical truths of our holy religion in a comprehensible, unaffected language". In 1821, General Superintendent Müller recommended this hymnal, which contained no confessional difference to the Reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper, to all of Nassau's former Lutheran congregations. In the Duchy, it was replaced by the hymnal of 1840 from the era of Bishop August Ludwig Heydenreich.