Even today, the  "Halle Hymns" or the melodies from the Geistreiches Gesangbuch ("Spiritual Hymnal") are well known to historians of Church, music and literature. Named the "Freylinghausen" ‑ or, to give it the full name, the Freylinghausensche Gesangbuch ‑ after its compiler, Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen, this two-volume anthology with its numerous individual editions and the much-published "Extract" from both parts (first published in 1718) and its two complete editions (1741 and 1771) became the most influential Pietist collection of hymns, to which can be traced back a whole series of texts and melodies in present-day hymnals. Today it is difficult to access this key work in the history of early modern Protestant hymnals, and it is the intention of the present edition to make it available again both for teaching and research into hymnology in Church history and into musicology and language and literature and for training Church musicians and actual liturgical practice.