Friedrich Eickhoff
Friedrich Hermann Eickhoff (1807–1886) was a German teacher, organist and song editor. He is sometimes listed as Friedrich Heinrich Eickhoff. He is best known for two popular songs he created by combining sacred texts with spring melodies: "Geh aus, mein Herz, und suche Freud" and "Ihr Kinderlein, kommet," using texts by Paul Gerhardt and Christoph von Schmid and tunes by August Harder and Johann Abraham Peter Schulz.
Born in Soest, he trained at the Lehrerseminar in Soest. In 1829 he moved to Gütersloh to teach, first at the Protestant girls’ school on Kirchstraße, later becoming its rector. He supervised the school's move to a new building in 1859 and helped merge three Protestant schools into the Bürgerschule in 1868.
Eickhoff was the organist of the Apostelkirche. Under pastor Johann Heinrich Volkening, Gütersloh became a center of 19th‑century Lutheran revival movements. Eickhoff worked to promote folk Christian songs, hoping to teach the gospel to children and families by setting evocative texts to memorable melodies.
Around 1835 Carl Bertelsmann founded a publishing house in Gütersloh. One early success was the Christian song collection Theomele (Gotteslieder), published with songs Eickhoff collected or created. He married Bertelsmann’s daughter Anna Friederike; they had four children, three of whom became teachers.
Eickhoff’s songs gained wide fame through Volkening’s songbook Kleine Missionsharfe, published by Bertelsmann in 1852, which ran in 82 editions and sold over two million copies. In 1873 he helped found the Historical Society in Gütersloh, a precursor to the Gütersloh Heimatverein.
In 1936, on the 50th anniversary of his death, a street in Gütersloh was named Eickhoffstrasse. It was named in honor of his two sons, Hermann and Paul Eickhoff, who were historians.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 08:53 (CET).