Ein Jäger aus Kurpfalz
Both the author of the lyrics and the composer of the melody are unknown. The earliest known written reference to the song is from 1794, but music historians have speculated the song was created earlier than that and passed around orally and informally. Ludwig Erk suggested the song was created in 1763; Franz Magnus Böhme speculated it came from even earlier, at the dawn of the 18th century during the cultural height of German hunting. The modern form of the melody was written by in the 1808 book "Musenalmanach für das Jahr 1808". Various people have been suggested to be the hunter that is the subject of the song. One common guess is , head-forester for the Bishop of Mainz in the Soonwald in the 18th century. In the tradition that suggests Utsch was the subject, the original creator of the lyrics was Martinus Klein, a Carmelite monk. Another proposal is John Casimir of the Palatinate-Simmern (German: Johann Kasimir), although this would imply a very early date for the creation of the song as John Casimir lived in the 16th century. Other prospects include , who served as forester of the Soonwald from 1719 to 1757 before Utsch, and Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria (German: Karl Theodor), who was Count Palatine of the Rhine from 1777–1799 and was known to both enjoy hunting and to have fathered a number of extramarital children. Charles Theodore was also a member of the Order of Saint Hubert, which would fit with the "Hubertus" lyric in the third stanza; Hubertus was the patron saint of hunting. The references to the cuckoo in stanza 6 are referring to the baby's cry as a result of the hunter's affair in stanzas 3–5; in variants that cut those stanzas, it is just an abstract event that will never happen, meaning the hunter will stay hunting.
Identity of the hunter
("A Hunter from the Palatinate") is a German folk song.