THEY SAY IT’S all the fault of a poor church mouse. It was the winter of 1818 in the village of Oberndorf near the Austrian Bavarian border. It’s a poor region and often the people starve.
Like all other villages, Oberndorf had a church, St. Nicklas. What the church lacked in wealth, it made up for in rodents. St. Nicklas had a mouse, they say, that was so hungry it gnawed a hole into the organ bellows. Many say the story is a myth, but it is true that the organ of St. Nicklas broke on Christmas Eve 1818. There would be no music during the Christmas mass.
At the time, the priest Josephus Franciscus Mohr served St. Nicklas. He was born in 1792 to Anna Schoiberin. As you notice by the name, Mohr’s mother was not married to his father. Mohr was born out of wedlock, a huge problem at the end of the 18th century.
His father Franz Mohr was a mercenary soldier and a deserter. Staying true to his calling, he deserted Joseph’s mother before their child was born.
Joseph Mohr seemed destined to live a short and destitute life, but the vicar and leader of music at Salzburg Cathedral became his patron. He made it possible for Mohr to go to seminary. He was ordained in 1815.
They say Mohr was an unusual priest. He habitually broke the law. He took church funds, purchased meat from poachers and gave it to the poor. He disrespected his superiors and had a reputation to joke with members of the opposite sex.
And if that was not shocking enough, he also loved beer and joined the beerhall crowd, belting out inappropriate drinking songs.
When Mohr contemplated a silent Christmas night, he remembered that he had written a poem two years back. He also remembered his friend Franz Xavier Gruber, a school teacher and his church organist. Franz Xavier could not just play organ; he could also play guitar and he could compose drinking songs.
Mohr thought, if the poem and Gruber came together, that encounter might possibly produce a passable substitute for real church music and the Holy Night would not have to be silent.
It worked.
At midnight, Mohr and Gruber stood before their congregation, guitar in hand. That was shocking, because the guitar was intended for drinking songs. It had absolutely no business being played in church. Mohr and Gruber used it anyway and sang for the first time the carol that would define Christmas from that night on. They sang Stille Nacht — Silent Night.
The story of Silent Night almost ended there, if it were not for the organ repair man Karl Mauracher. When he fixed the organ, he found the sheet music of Silent Night.
He gave it to two families who made a living as traveling vocal ensembles.
They unleashed Stille Nacht on the world. They sang it for the Tzar of Russia and for the Austrian Emperor. It became the favorite Christmas carol of the Prussian king.
They also took it into the New World. Silent Night was first performed in New York City outside of Trinity Church in 1839.
By the middle of the century, Silent Night was well-loved in Europe and America. But there was one problem.
Mauracher had failed to disclose who wrote the carol. Having a great Christmas Carol written by nobody-knew-who did not jive well with the Royal Prussian Court Chapel in Berlin, “What do you mean we don’t know who wrote that? We need a name or the Prussian devotion to detail is in irredeemable peril!”
In 1854, they wrote to the Roman Catholic Benedictines in Salzburg to save their Lutheran souls. Word of the inquiry reached Gruber and he told the Prussian court how he and Mohr averted the Christmas night to be silent.
Christmas without Silent Night, by Mohr and Gruber, is almost unthinkable. The song has been translated into countless languages and the United Nations has declared it World Cultural Heritage.
God bless Mohr and Gruber, the mouse and the Austrian beer hall culture, without which the night before Christmas would be much more silent.
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Issues of Faith is a rotating column by religious leaders on the North Olympic Peninsula. The Rev. Olaf Baumann, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), is pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Port Angeles. www.go2trinity.org, www.olaf-baumann.com.
