Wilhelmina Amalie Koch was a German composer of sacred and secular song melodies, biblical motets and choral and instrumental music
Background
Mina Koch was born in Waldböckelheim. When she was eleven years old her mother Schapper Amalie née Weinrich (1816–1856) died. In 1860 her father became the Professor and Director of the Royal Theological Seminary and Superintendent for Wittenberg.
Career
She was the second of six children of Waldböckelheim pastor Karl August Schapper (1815–1898). She spent her childhood in Münster am Stein and in Koblenz. The family moved there to a big house at the parish church square where Johann Bugenhagen had lived and where Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon had metropolitan
Mina Koch spent the first years there in a girls" school in Droyßig at Zeitz, where her Confirmation was celebrated.
The Wittenberg church music director and organist Carl Stein (1824–1902) gave her music theory and harmony lessons. On 27 April 1865 she was married to August Koch (1836–1910) in the Wittenberg church with her father officiating.
Mina Koch became the mother of ten children, two of whom died in their early years. At the age of fifty years Mina Koch went blind.
After his retirement in 1906, August Koch moved the couple to Wernigerode.
Koch: Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (Diktat 1912)
Mina Koch: Kompositionen (Nachschrift von Martha Koch 1911)
Georg Bießecker: Artikel Koch, Wilhelmina (Mina) geb. Schapper. In: *Wolfgang Herbst (Hrsg): Komponisten und Liederdichter des Evangelischen Gesangbuchs (= Handbuch zum Evangelischen Gesangbuch, Band 2), Göttingen 1999, South. 183.