Heinrich Siegmund Oswald

OSWALD, Heinrich Siegmund. b. near Liegnitz, Silesia (now Legnica, Poland), 30 June 1751; d. Breslau (Wroclaw), 8 September 1834. He was educated locally before becoming Private Secretary to the Landrath von Prittwitz in 1773. He then worked in Hamburg and Breslau before being appointed to the staff of Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia. After the king’s death in 1797 he retired, first to Hirschberg and then to Breslau. He is known as the author of ‘Wem in Leidenstagen’, a hymn of 14 stanzas, first published in his Letzte Mittheilungen meiner der Wahrheit und Religion geweihter Muse (Breslau, 1826), based on Psalm 50: 15: ‘And call upon me in the day of trouble [‘Leidenstag’]. It is not in EG,...