Life and Work
Josef Franz Mohr was born in Salzburg on December 11, 1792, to Anna Schoiberin and a mercenary soldier, Franz Mohr, an army deserter that abandoned Joseph's mother before Joseph's birth.
As his musical talent was not recognized, he found a sponsor to set him upon the path to higher education. As an illegitimate child he needed the Pope's special permission to study for the priesthood and was ordained a priest in 1815. Rev. Mohr was sent to a pilgrim church in the remote Alpine village of Mariapfarr, where in 1816 he wrote a six-stanza poem that was to become the world's most popular carol. Mohr was moved to Oberndorf in 1817 to stay there for two years. When Franz Gruber agreed to compose a melody and guitar arrangement for the poem to be sung at midnight mass on December 24, 1818, 'Silent Night' was born. Within a few short years, arrangements of the carol appeared in churches in the Salzburg Diocese and folk singers from the Ziller Valley were taking the song on tours around Europe.
Until 2006, it was thought that Mohr and Gruber had collaborated on just one song. Now another song has been located in the Wagrain parish archive by the Salzburg Diocesan Archives. "Te Deum" with text by Joseph Mohr and melody by Franz Xaver Gruber can be heard in an audio exhibit at the Waggerl Museum in Wagrain.
Mohr, a generous man who donated most of his salary to charity, was moved from place to place and finally became parish pastor in Wagrain, where he founded a new school for children. He created a fund to allow children from poor families to attend school and he set up a system for the care of the elderly.
Father Mohr died of a pulmonary disease on December 4, 1848. The village school is named after him and his grave has been kept in a place of honor in the nearby churchyard cemetery. An outdoor exhibit detailing the life of Joseph Mohr is situated on the walkway between the church and the parish house where he once lived. In 2006, the town's Waggerl Museum set up a new permanent exhibit -- Joseph Mohr - Vicar of Wagrain.
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