Known in German as Was mein Gott will, das gescheh allzeit, this hymn is generally attributed, on the strength of a 1571 Copenhagen hymnal, to Albrecht von Preußen, Albert of Prussia, the Grand Master of the Order of Teutonic Knights whom Martin Luther personally counseled to marry and secularize his order. Albert took that advice, married Dorothea of Denmark, joined the Lutheran princes, and in 1544 founded the University of Königsberg. Tradition holds that he penned this text in 1547 out of grief after Dorothea’s death, choosing to live by the motto “Trust God alone.” The hymn meditates on the Third Petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done,” grounding that submission not in bare resignation but in the assurance that the God who numbers every hair on our heads will never let His people be chastened beyond what they can bear. Its sturdy tune began as a secular French chanson by Claudin de Sermisy before being fitted to sacred words in Antwerp in 1540, and the earliest printed broadsheets of the hymn, from the mid-1550s, were illustrated with woodcuts of Christ on the cross and Christ seated alone on a rock in a field.