The principal hymn-writers of the Lutheran school, in the latter part of the 16th century, were Nikolaus Selnecker, Herman and Hans Sachs, the shoemaker of Nuremberg, also known in other branches of literature. All these wrote some good hymns. They were succeeded by men of another sort, to whom F. A. Cunz gives the name of "master-singers," as having raised both the poetical and the musical standard of German hymnody:--Bartholomäus Ringwaldt, Ludwig Helmbold, Johannes Pappus, Martin Schalling, Rutilius and Sigismund Weingartner. The principal topics of their hymns (as if with some foretaste of the calamities which were soon to follow) were the vanity of earthly things, resignation to the Divine will, and preparation for death and judgment. The well-known English hymn, "Great God, what do I see and hear," is founded upon one by Ringwaldt. Of a quite different character were two of great beauty and universal popularity, composed by Philip Nicolai, a Westphalian pastor, during a pestilence in 1597, and published by him, with fine chorales, two years afterwards. One of these (the "Sleepers wake! a voice is calling," of Mendelssohn's oratorio, _St Paul_) belongs to the family of Advent or New Jerusalem hymns. The other, a "Song of the believing soul concerning the Heavenly Bridegroom" ("Wie schön leucht't uns der Morgenstern"--"O morning Star, how fair and bright"), became the favourite marriage hymn of Germany. Period of Thirty Years' War. The hymns produced during the Thirty Years' War are characteristic of that unhappy time, which (as Miss Winkworth says) "caused religious men to look away from this world," and made their songs more and more expressive of personal feelings. In point of refinement and graces of style, the hymn-writers of this period excelled their predecessors. Their taste was chiefly formed by the influence of Martin Opitz, the founder of what has been called the "first Silesian school" of German poetry, who died comparatively young in 1639, and who, though not of any great original genius, exercised much power as a critic. Some of the best of these works were by men who wrote little. In the famous battle-song of Gustavus Adolphus, published (1631) after the victory of Breitenfeld, for the use of his army, "Verzage nicht du Häuflein klein" ("Fear not, O little flock, the foe"), we have almost certainly a composition of the hero-king himself, the versification corrected by his chaplain Jakob Fabricius (1593-1654) and the music composed by Michael Altenburg, whose name has been given to the hymn. This, with Luther's paraphrase of the 67th Psalm, was sung by Gustavus and his soldiers before the battle of Lützen in 1632. Two very fine hymns, one of prayer for deliverance and peace, the other of trust in God under calamities, were written about the same time by Matthäus Löwenstern, a saddler's son, poet, musician and statesman, who was ennobled after the peace by the emperor Ferdinand III.