On the road by the Leopoldskron Hotel was a bus stop where we waited for a bus to take us to the train station in Salzburg to catch a city train to Oberndorf, about 26 km away. The ride was about 30 min through the Austrian countryside. Oberndorf is right below the German border.
We walked from the city train stop into town, following signs to the Stille Nacht Church, which is really a small memorial building that stands where the original church once stood. That church was flooded so many times, they had to tear it down. The little town sits right by a river and flooded all the time.
The Austrian priest Joseph Mohr was in desperate need of music for the midnight mass because his church’s organ was broken. So, he penned these lyrics and brought them to the organist Franz Gruber, who composed a simple melody for a guitar accompaniment.
Silent Night is sung by around two billion people every year for Christmas in over 300 different languages and dialects. Silent Night was created after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, 1792-1815. The wars had caused great suffering across a lot of Europe.
Here is a very nice telling of the Silent Night story:
These stones are from the old church that was torn down.
Our Frankfurt Germany Mission 