Johannes Khuen

John Kuen, also Khuen (* 1606 in Moosach (Upper Bavaria), † November 14, 1675 in Munich) was a German Catholic poets of the Baroque.

The talented farm boy received through the mediation of the village priest, a scholarship at the Jesuit Gymnasium in Munich (today Wilhelmsgymnasium Munich) and graduated in 1625 from. He studied theology and rhetoric, and was ordained a priest in 1630. In 1631 he was chaplain of the Church of Saint Peter in Munich, where he received a benefice in 1634. Of these two benefices he lived modestly until his death.

Kuen wrote a large number of hymns and neo-Latin and German poems with mostly moralizing statement, published in large anthologies. His hymns have a clearly popular character. He often uses the topos of death as the last, just instance. Caines songs had far-reaching influence, inter alia, to Abraham a Sancta Clara. Yet, Clemens Brentano took some of them on in Des Knaben Wunderhorn.