1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bogatzky, Karl Heinrich von

BOGATZKY, KARL HEINRICH VON (1690–1774), German hymn-writer, was born at Jankowe in Lower Silesia on the 7th of September 1690. At first a page at the ducal court of Saxe-Weissenfels, he next studied law and theology at Jena and Halle; but ill-health preventing his preferment he settled at Glaucha in Silesia, where he founded an orphanage. After living for a time at Köstritz, and from 1740 to 1745 at the court of Christian Ernst, duke of Saxe-Coburg, at Saalfeld, he made his home at the Waisenhaus (orphanage) at Halle, where he engaged in spiritual work and in composing hymns and sacred songs, until his death on the 15th of June 1774. Bogatzky’s chief works are Güldenes Schatzkästlein der Kinder Gottes (1718), which has reached more than sixty editions; and Übung der Gottseligkeit in allerlei geistlichen Liedern (1750).

See Bogatzky’s autobiography—Lebenslauf von ihm selbst geschrieben (Halle, 1801; new ed., Berlin, 1872); and Ledderhose, Das Leben Bogatzky’s (Heidelberg, 1846); also Kelly, C. H. von Bogatzky’s Life and Work (London, 1889).