Meyer, Ernest (1884–1967)

Ernest Meyer served the Adventist Church as a typographer and printer and is credited with preparing the first hymnbook, Hymnes et Louanges, for the French-speaking Adventist churches.

Early Life

Ernest Meyer was born in 1884 in the town of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. His parents, Frédéric Meyer (1854–1907) and Pauline Zbinden-Meyer (1854–1915), had eight children, three daughters, one of whom lived no more than three months, and five boys, four of whom later served the Adventist Church. They lived in the suburbs of the city of Lausanne, in French-speaking Switzerland, and were among the first members of the Adventist Church in Lausanne, founded in 1886.¹

Career/Ministry

Ernest worked as a typographer and printer. He married Léa Huguenin and together they had three daughters: Violette, Edith, and Suzanne. From 1914, Ernest was employed at the printing press located on the estate of La Lignière Clinic (Lake Geneva Sanatorium) in Gland. The property had been purchased in 1904. The printing house had moved from Basel, where it had been operating since its foundation by John Andrews in 1875 in the building where the first medical home was located. Meyer worked in Gland until 1922, when the printing presses were transferred to Dammarie-les-Lys, near Melun, in the Paris region. A professional, he assisted in assembling the first printing press in Dammarie-les-Lys. The publishing house took the name Les Signes des Temps [The Signs of the Times];² today it is Vie et Santé [Life and Health]. Meyer was responsible for the presses and composition and ran the publishing house for several years.³ During that time he worked with Louis Antoine Mathy, a pastor working in Paris, in producing a hymnbook (1933), Hymnes et Louanges, for the French-speaking Adventist churches. Mathy writes: “He [Meyer] was in charge of the musical part and of all the steps to obtain the authorizations to reproduce the hymns. […] It is thanks to his efforts that we were able to succeed.”⁴

Later Life

Meyer retired with his wife in Switzerland, in Clarens, on the Vaudois Riviera, between Vevey and Montreux. He died at La Lignière Clinic in 1967, three years before his wife, who spent her last years in the nursing home of French-speaking Switzerland, Le Flon, in Oron-la-Ville. He was buried in the cemetery of Gland.

Contribution/Legacy

Ernest Meyer, who was very interested in music, was credited with preparing the first hymnbook, Hymnes et Louanges, for the French-speaking Adventist churches, which until then had been using material from other Protestant communities.

Sources

Mathy, Louis-Antoine. “Hymnes et Louanges.” Revue Adventiste, March 1, 1961.

Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook. Washington, D. C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1933 and 1950.

Notes

1. The origin of the Meyer family goes back to the year 1322, in the small village of Reisiswil, in the canton of Bern, in German-speaking Switzerland (Roland Meyer, personal knowledge as grand-nephew of Ernest Meyer).↩

2. See “French Publishing House,” Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (Washington, D. C.: Review and Herald, 1933), 251.↩

3. In the 1950 Yearbook, his name was still mentioned in the House Committee in charge of the French Publishing House. See “French Publishing House,” Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (Washington, D. C.: Review and Herald, 1950), 326.

4. Louis-Antoine Mathy, “Hymnes et Louanges,” Revue Adventiste, March 1, 1961, 6.↩