About the translation

Gerhard Tersteegen (1697–1769) — Reformed lay preacher, hymn-writer, and spiritual director at Mülheim an der Ruhr — carried on a lifelong ministry of spiritual direction by letter, across Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and into colonial Pennsylvania. Six hundred five of these letters were printed in the first edition of his Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe (Solingen, 1773–75). The complete collection of 605 letters is now available here in English translation, free to read.

For his life in full — the ribbon-weaver's workshop, the Pilgerhütte, the years of silence and the years of letters — see Who Was Gerhard Tersteegen? at Encounter Press.

The English is a scholarly-readable translation: faithful enough for a scholar to cite, clear enough for a pastor to read aloud and a layperson to follow. Form (sentence length, rhythm, idiom) is adapted for English; substance is Tersteegen's and inviolable. Where fidelity and elegance collide, fidelity wins and the elegance goes in a note. Words the German only implies are marked. Brief 1 carries the complete public-domain German as a full-length sample of the edition; every other letter shows the opening lines of its German, with the complete transcription reserved for the forthcoming Encounter Press critical edition.

Each letter is translated from the public-domain German — the 1773–75 first edition and the 1845 Gesammelte Schriften, collated against page-images of the first edition. Scripture in the body is rendered from Tersteegen's own German wording; references are given to the KJV. Gustav Adolf Benrath's critical edition (2008) is gratefully consulted as a finding aid — the indispensable modern foundation for dating and addressee identification — while the translations themselves are made from the public-domain sources.

Three features of the page shape the edition. The long ſ — which a modern eye reads as an f — runs through every word: ſanfte Einſchlafen unſers. The argument and the epigraph are set in Schwabacher, the rounder, wider face a printer used for emphasis inside Fraktur; that is why the English carries no italics where the German raises its voice. And divine names appear as Versalien, often letterspaced — G O T T — which the reader text renders as ordinary capitals. Each of these is recorded letter by letter in the editorial apparatus and normalized for the reader, so that what reaches the page here is Tersteegen’s words rather than his printer’s conventions.

Every letter is independently citable. The canonical identifier follows the first edition's own structure — Band · Theil · Brief — because the four Theile each restart their letter numbering at 1 (a bare “Letter 98” is ambiguous). Copying a passage automatically carries a short citation with it; you're welcome to keep it.

Scholarly use

What this is. The complete 605 letters of Gerhard Tersteegen’s Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe (Solingen, 1773–75), in a scholarly-readable English translation with translator’s notes; the first time the whole collection has appeared in English. The German source is public domain; the English and the notes are © 2026 Jarred Fenlason.

Sources. Theile I and II from the 1773 first edition, sixty-three letters from the 1845 Gesammelte Schriften where that is the better witness, collated against page images of the first edition (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek). Theile III and IV from the 1775 first edition, collated against the 1798/99 second edition (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin). Gustav Adolf Benrath’s critical edition (2008) is consulted as a finding aid for dating and addressee identification and is never reproduced.

Citing a letter. Use the first edition’s own identifier, Band · Theil · Brief, with the URL: for example, Tersteegen, Briefe, Band II, Theil III, Brief 44, gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdii-thiii-044.html. The four Theile each restart at 1, so a bare letter number is ambiguous. Letter URLs are stable; a letter’s address does not change once published.

What each page records. Addressee, date, and source, with the print’s own fact in bold and any conjecture marked as such; the opening of the German; the English; the translator’s notes. The textual apparatus, collation, and full German transcription are reserved for the forthcoming critical edition from Encounter Press.

Reuse. Up to five complete letters may be shared with attribution without asking; the permissions page covers the rest.

Translator. Jarred Fenlason, D.Min. Encounter Press, and its imprint Encounter Classics, publish Tersteegen in print.

Sources, headers, and conventions

Sources. Theile I and II are translated from the 1773 first edition of the Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe, sixty-three of their letters from the 1845 Gesammelte Schriften where that is the better witness, collated against page-images of the first edition. Theile III and IV are translated from the 1775 first edition and collated against the 1798/99 second edition (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin). The German shown for each letter is normalized to the orthography of the 1845 Gesammelte Schriften; every rendered word comes from these public-domain prints. Each letter’s header names its own edition and page numbers.

The header. Above each letter, three lines give the addressee, the date, and the source. Each opens with a bold fact; commentary may follow. The bold is what the print, or the letter itself, actually gives — so a date may read “Good Friday (year not given)” rather than a guess, and no place of writing is supplied where the print has none. Unnamed means the printed edition suppressed the recipient’s name, as it usually did; N. N. is the print’s own placeholder. A name marked conjectural was recovered from the modern critical edition’s heading and is offered as a probable, not a certain, identification. Where a header cites “the critical edition,” it means Benrath’s edition of 2008, consulted throughout as a finding aid for dating and identification and never reproduced; a reference such as “van Andel, 283” points to the letter register in van Andel’s edition of the Dutch letters (1982).

Register. The English body is written in modern third person (he knows, he gives). God is addressed as Thou, the human recipient as you, as the German distinguishes them. Scripture keeps the wording of the King James Version where Tersteegen quotes it, and a King James cadence is kept only where his own German shifts into Luther’s. Two of Tersteegen’s terms are rendered consistently within their technical sense but not by a single English word: Grund, the depth where the soul meets God, is always “ground” (lowercase); Abgeschiedenheit is “detachment” where the mystical tradition’s abstract sense is in view and “withdrawnness” or “seclusion” where his own image of withdrawing from creatures is — the reader meets both, and each is deliberate.

House conventions. Every letter closes in one shape: the subscription on its own line (Your obliged weak brother.) and the print’s dateline beneath it in its period form (Mülheim, the 9th of September, 1764.); the modern form of the date belongs to the header. The 1773 print set subscription and dateline side by side in two columns, which no web page can hold, so the edition sets them one above the other, as Benrath also separates them. Spelling is American throughout. Scripture references give the full book name with a colon (John 14:21), in parentheses where the print has them. Punctuation follows the print: its exclamation marks after salutations, its double dash where Tersteegen pauses, and its etc. The reverential capital is used consistently for God (He, Him, Thou, Thy), except inside a Scripture quotation, which keeps the King James lowercase, and in an apostrophe to the soul or to an abstraction. Quotations of every kind — Scripture, a hymn line, a prayer written for the reader — stand in quotation marks, never in italics; italics mark only German or other foreign words, titles, and each letter’s summary line. Tersteegen’s own hymnbook, the Geistliches Blumengärtlein, is named the Spiritual Flower Garden wherever a letter refers to it. The header rows are written in plain English: where the print suppresses an addressee’s name, the name is supplied from Benrath’s critical edition and the row says so; a dateline the print does not give is marked undated. The translator’s notes take one shape: a short paragraph on what the letter is, then a list of a few words and echoes; they speak of the letter, not of the type or the apparatus.

Common questions

Why does the German stop after a few lines?

Each letter shows the opening of its German so you can see what the English was made from — the salutation, the first sentence or two, in the edition’s own orthography. The complete German transcription is reserved for the forthcoming Encounter Press critical edition, where it belongs beside the apparatus. Brief 1 carries its German in full as a sample of what that edition looks like.

May I read these aloud, or use one in a sermon?

Yes, gladly — that is what they were translated for. Read them aloud, quote them in sermons and classes, print one for someone who is sick. The permissions page sets out what needs asking for (chiefly reprinting at length or commercially) and what does not. When you quote, the citation travels with the text automatically if you copy it from the page.

Why do the letter numbers start over?

Because the first edition does. The 605 letters were printed in two Bände divided into four Theile, and each Theil begins its own count at 1 — so there are four different “Letter 98”s. Every letter here is identified the way the edition identifies it: Band · Theil · Brief.

How do I cite a letter?

Copy any passage from a letter page and a short citation comes with it. The canonical form is the Band·Theil·Brief identifier plus the URL, which stays stable: a letter’s address never changes once it is published.

Is there a printed edition?

Encounter Press publishes Tersteegen in print, and a scholarly critical edition of the letters — with the complete German and the textual apparatus — is in preparation. The books page has what is available now.

The German texts presented here were transcribed from the public-domain editions and remain public domain. The English translations and notes are © 2026 Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved. See Copyright & Permissions for what that covers and how to request permission.