Gottfried Wilhelm Sacer
German poet
Gottfried Wilhelm Sacer (11 July 1635 – 8 September 1699) was a German jurist, poet, satirist and Protestant hymn writer. He worked as an advocate at the court of Wolfenbüttel. Johann Sebastian Bach used a stanza from his hymn "Gott fähret auf gen Himmel" to conclude his Ascension Oratorio. Another hymn, Jesu, meines Glaubens Zier, appears in the 1736 Schemelli Gesangbuch in a setting attributed to Bach.
Career
Sacer was born in Naumburg, the son of the town's mayor. He was first educated by private teachers and from 1649 at the Landesschule Pforta. From 1654 he studied at the University of Jena law and literature. In 1657 he accepted a position as Hofmeister in Berlin where he had contact to poets such as Paul Gerhardt, Georg Philipp Harsdörffer and Andreas Tscherning. Johann Rist made him a member of the literary association Elbschwanenorden under the name Hierophilo.
From 1669 he worked as an advocate at the court of Wolfenbüttel, a post for which he had to complete his studies.
The public source identifies “Gottfried Wilhelm Sacer” as german poet. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Gottfried, Wilhelm and Sacer.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q98697. VIAF identifies the subject as 77116956. The Library of Congress control number is no2023025491. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1635, 1699, 1736 and 1649.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gottfried Wilhelm Sacer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.