Martin Georg Emil Körber ( in
Võnnu – in
Kuressaare
Kuressaare () is a town on Saaremaa island in Estonia. It is the administrative centre of Saaremaa Parish and the capital of Saare County. Kuressaare is the westernmost town in Estonia. The recorded population on 1 January 2018 was 13,276.
Th ...
) was a
Baltic German
Baltic Germans (german: Deutsch-Balten or , later ) were ethnic German inhabitants of the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, in what today are Estonia and Latvia. Since their coerced resettlement in 1939, Baltic Germans have markedly declined ...
pastor, composer, writer and choir leader.
Life
Martin Georg Emil Körber was the son of Pastor Edward Philipp Körber (1770-1850). He studied theology at the
University of Tartu
The University of Tartu (UT; et, Tartu Ülikool; la, Universitas Tartuensis) is a university in the city of Tartu in Estonia. It is the national university of Estonia. It is the only classical university in the country, and also its biggest ...
. His older brother was pastor and writer
Carl Eduard Körber (1802–1883).
He was a teacher in Kuressaare from 1842 to 1845. In 1846 he became the pastor in
Anseküla, where he founded a choir. In July 1862, he organized a choral concert in Kuressaare. On May 21, 1863, he organized one of the first song festivals in Estonia on the
Sõrve Peninsula
Sõrve is a village in Harku Parish, Harju County in northern Estonia
Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finla ...
. After retiring in 1875, he moved to Kuressaare and continued writing. He died in 1893.
Works
His songbooks included over 1000 sacred and secular songs in German and Estonian. In 1846, he published a catechism. Over 300 000 copies were printed. He published a three-volume history of Saaremaa in German, called ''Oesel Einst und Jetzt'' (Saaremaa, then and now) between 1887 and 1915.
See also
*
Culture of Estonia
References
*
1817 births
1893 deaths
People from Kastre Parish
People from Kreis Dorpat
Baltic-German people
Estonian Lutheran clergy
Estonian male writers
Estonian songwriters
Estophiles
19th-century Estonian writers
Estonian non-fiction writers
19th-century Estonian composers
Male non-fiction writers
University of Tartu alumni
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