MOHR Josef

MOHR Josef (born 11 December 1792, Salzburg, Austria; died 4 December 1848, Wagrain, Austria), Austrian Roman Catholic priest and writer, who wrote the words to the Christmas carol "Silent Night".

As a boy, Mohr would serve simultaneously as a singer and violinist in the choirs of the University Church and at the Benedictine monastery church of St. Peter in Salzburg. From 1808 to 1810, Mohr studied at the Benedictine monastery of Kremsmünster in the province of Upper Austria. He then returned to Salzburg to attend the Lyceum school, and in 1811, he entered the seminary and on 21 August 1815, Mohr graduated and was ordained as a priest.

In the fall of 1815, Mohr was asked to provide temporary help in the village of Ramsau near Berchtesgaden. Mohr then served as assistant priest in Mariapfarr (1815–1817). It was during this time, in 1816, that he penned the words to "Silent Night" in Mariapfarr. On Christmas Eve in 1818, Mohr walked the three kilometres from his home in Oberndorf bei Salzburg to visit his friend Franz Xaver Gruber in the neighbouring town of Arnsdorf bei Laufen. Mohr brought with him a poem he had written some two years earlier. He needed a carol for the Christmas Eve midnight Mass that was only a few hours away, and hoped his friend, a school teacher who also served as the church's choir master and organist, could set his poem to music. Gruber composed the melody for Mohr's "Stille Nacht" in just a few hours. The song was sung at Midnight Mass in a simple arrangement for guitar and choir.

Mohr died of respiratory disease on 4 December 1848, at the age of 55.