Leiden--Helder, Friedrich Ludwig.

The album amicorum of Friedrich Ludwig Helder, kept at Leiden, Saumur and other Protestant centres of learning during the early part of the seventeenth century, including entries by grotius and heinsius

An interesting snapshot of European Protestantism in the early seventeenth century. Helder was clearly a popular young man with his fellow-students and teachers, who often pay warm tribute to him in their entries in his album. Following the pattern of the time, his education led him to various centres of Protestantism, notably Leiden (where he met Daniel Heinsius and the French classical scholar Claude Salmasius), Amsterdam (where he encountered the classical scholar Gerhard Johannes Voss and the Dutch poet Caspar Barlaeus), Groningen (where his album was inscribed by the Dutch Calvinist theologian Franciscus Gomarus), and the Académie Protestante at Saumur (with several entries by other foreign students from various parts of Europe). Travelling through Paris, he encountered the Protestant pastor Charles Drelincourt, and it was probably in that city that he met Hugo Grotius, who was then the Swedish ambassador to France. His travels also took him to London, Oxford, Lyon and northern Italy. Nothing more is known of Helder, but it is tempting to speculate that he might have been the son of the Protestant pastor Bartholomaeus Helder (1585-1635), a poet and composer of numerous hymns, who lived in Remstädt, near Gotha. His best-known hymn, 'O Lämmlein Gottes, Jesu Christ', was set to music by C.P.E. Bach.