"Zu Bethlehem geboren" is a German Christmas carol. The text is attributed to Friedrich Spee and was first printed in the collection Geistlichen Psälterlein (Little sacred psalter) by in Cologne in 1637. The author was unknown until the 20th century, but research of style and content arrived at the attribution. The song was printed with a then-popular secular melody in 1638. The song appears in current Catholic and Protestant hymnals.
The melody was taken from a French chanson that was popular at the time, Une petite feste, with a frivolous text. It is found in a Paris song collection by Pierre Cerveau, Airs mis en musique ÃÂ quatre parties (1599), and also in ' (1600). Spee often wrote sacred texts for secular melodies, intending to fight their "pestilent poison" ().
The song was printed with the melody in 1638, titled Hertzopffer (The heart's sacrifice) in the Cologne collection Geistlicher Psalter. Probably even sooner, the melody appeared with a text for Kindelwiegen, "Nun wiegen wir das Kindlein" (Now we rock the little child) in a manuscript tablature, which was written by Henricus Beginiker from 1623.
In the 19th century, the hymn became a sacred folksong. Anton Wilhelm von Zuccalmaglio used the same melody, slightly modified, for a lullaby "Die Blümelein, sie schlafen" (The little flowers, they sleep) in 1840. This version was adopted by Johannes Brahms as "Sandmännchen", No. 4 of his 15 Volkskinderlieder, WoO 31 (McCorkle), with a piano accompaniment, first printed in Winterthur by J. Rieter-Biedermann in 1858.
The song is part of current German hymnals, in the Protestant hymnal Evangelisches Gesangbuch as EG 32, and in the Catholic Gotteslob as GL 239.