Heinrich Bone

Heinrich Bone (25 September 181310 June 1893) was a German educator and hymnwriter. He wrote a reader for German studies which was used for higher education in Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria, until it was banned during the Kulturkampf. He published a hymnal, Cantate!, which was used by several Catholic dioceses and became a model for common hymnals. Some of his own hymns, including paraphrases of Latin hymns, are part of recent hymnals, both Catholic and Protestant, such as "Komm, Schöpfer Geist, kehr bei uns ein" as a paraphrase of the 9th-century hymn for Pentecost, Veni Creator Spiritus.

Life Born in Drolshagen, Bone was the eldest of six children. His parents, Mathäus Bone and his wife Elisabeth, née Kramer, ran a small button factory, an inn and engaged in farming. In 1859, he was appointed director of the Rabanus-Maurus-Gymnasium in Mainz, initiated by Bishop Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler.

Due to the Kulturkampf, Bone was forced into premature retirement In 1876, his German reader Deutsches Lesebuch für höhere Lehranstalten was banned from use in schools in Hesse and Prussia.