Hans Sachs

(b Nuremberg, 5 Nov 1494; d there, 19 Jan 1576). German poet and Meistersinger. He went to school in Nuremberg and then learnt shoemaking, travelling throughout Germany during his apprenticeship (1511-16). He became a master shoemaker in 1520 and prospered in his home town, then at the height of its cultural and economic development. In 1509-11 he had joined the Meistersinger guild, and through him Meistergesang was brought into the service of the Reformation. His guild was a model throughout Germany. His massive output (over 6000 works) includes Meisterlieder, satirical and didactic poems (Spruchgedichte), prose dialogues and plays, as well as 13 Meistertöne for which he composed melodies. His posthumous fame was assured above all by Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868).

The German poet Hans Sachs (1494-1576) made Nuremberg famous in his time as a center of Meistergesang.

Born in Nuremberg, the son of a tailor of the upper middle class, Hans Sachs was apprenticed to a shoemaker in 1508. As a journeyman, he traveled from one German town to another between 1511 and 1516 learning his trade. Simultaneously, he studied Meistergesang in the Singschulen, his principal teacher being Leonhard Nunnenbeck. Meistergesang is the German art of singing original poems to usually original tunes, according to the rules of the pedestrian craft of burgher poets; it was revived in the 19th century in parody form (as sung by Beckmesser in Richard Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger).

In Nuremberg in 1517 Sachs attained the rank of master in the shoemakers' guild and in Meistergesang. He declared himself in favor of Martin Luther in the poem Die wittenbergische Nachtigall ("The Nightingale of Wittenberg") in 1523 and also in prose dialogues.

Sachs produced works in profusion: more than 4,000 Meisterlieder; 208 dramas, according to his own count; 85 Shrovetide plays; and many rhymed orations and other verses. During his lifetime three volumes of his verse appeared, and two more were issued posthumously. Other works remain unpublished in a collection in Zwickau, Saxony. His themes, derived from his reading in anecdotal and farcical literature of the time and from popularized and trivialized hero lore, cover a wide range from classical (Lucretia), biblical (Cain and Abel), and medieval (Siegfried) times to later periods. No matter what the subject or era, the time and locale are always those of Sachs's own Nuremberg; his characters talk like upright burghers of his age.

Sachs's so-called meistersinger dramas, a genre originating with his predecessor Rosenplüth, are merely dramatized dialogues, weak and heavy in the tragic mood, sprightly in the comic. Sachs excelled in the didactic-satiric manner. His best works are his later, exuberant Shrovetide plays, such as Der fahrende suchüler im Paradies (1550; The Itinerant Scholar in Paradise) and Das heisse Eisen (1551; The Hot Iron), and such narrative skits as St. Peter mit der Geis (St. Peter with the Goat), all in rhymed doggerels.

Sachs's satire is good-natured, his humor never unduly coarse. He had a healthy moral instinct and a realistic bent, best employed on familiar ground. His comedies, performed in taverns and halls, though lacking dramatic quality, have influenced folk drama. Eclipsed after his death, Sachs's work was revived and popularized by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in a poem of 1776; and in the opening scene of Faust, Goethe resuscitated Sachs's free doggerels. Sachs is the only German writer of his time whose short, witty, unsophisticated narrative poems and humble, jolly, dramatic Shrovetide skits can hold an audience today.

Further Reading

Some of Sachs's writings are in Selections from Hans Sachs, chosen by William M. Calder (1948). His work is discussed in Walter French, Medieval Civilization as Illustrated by the Fastnachtsspiele of Hans Sachs (1925).

Sachs, Hans (Nuremberg, 1494-1576, Nuremberg), one of the most prolific writers of the 16th c., was by trade a shoemaker. After an education which included a grounding in Latin he was apprenticed in 1508. From 1511 to 1516 a travelling journeyman, he visited Vienna, Frankfurt, Lübeck, and Osnabrück, before settling permanently in Nuremberg. Trained in Meistergesang in his teens, Sachs became conspicuous in the Guild of Meistersinger, writing a large number of songs conforming to the strict rules of the form. In 1519 he married Kunigunde Kreutzer, who died in 1560, and he took as second wife in 1561 Barbara Harscher, a widow of 27. He was an adherent of Luther, whom he celebrated in the poem Die wittenbergisch Nachtigall (1523). Until checked by the city council, he supported the Protestant cause in prose dialogues, of which the most widely known was his Disputation zwischen einem Chorherren und Schuchmacher (1524).

The greater part of Sachs's literary output consists of Meisterlieder and Spruchgedichte, a designation which embraces a very large number of humorous fables, anecdotes, and tales in verse (see Schwank), as well as some 200 verse plays. Among the Schwänke are Schlauraffenland (1530), Sanct Peter mit der Geiß (1555), Gespräch Sanct Peters mit den Landsknechten (1556), Schwank von dem frommen Adel (1562), and Der Schneider mit dem Pannier (1563). Sachs's plays include tragedies, comedies, and Fastnachtspiele. Their range of subjects is an indication of the extent and variety of his reading, and only a few titles can be mentioned. Among the tragedies are Lucretia (1527), Tragödie von der Schöpfung (1548), Der Wüterich Herodes (1552), Die Maccabäer (1552), Die mörderisch Königin Klitemnestra (1554), Die getreu Fürstin Alcestis (1555), Tragödie König Sauls (1557), Der hörnen Siegfried (1557), Tragödie der ganz Passio (1558), Tragödie des jüngsten Gerichts (1558), Tragödie von Alexandro Magno (1558), and Andreas der ungerisch König mit Bancbano seinem getrewen Statthalter (1561). The comedies (Komödien), which are often dramas rather than comic plays, include Von dem Tobia und seinem Sohn (1533), Griselda (1546), Die Judith (1551), Die ungleichen Kinder Eve (1553), Komödie vom verlorenen Sohn (1556), David mit Batseba (1557), Die Komödie der Königin Esther (1559), and Die junge Witwe Franzisca (1560). The following are among the better-known Fastnachtspiele: Das Hofgesind Veneris (1517), Der Teufel mit dem alten Weib (1545), Der farent Schüler ins Paradeis (1550), Der böse Rauch (1551), Das heiß Eisen (1551), Der Bauer im Fegfeuer (1552), and Der Roßdieb zu Fünsing (1553). In 1567, when he believed that he was about to die, he wrote an autobiographical poem, Summa all meiner gedicht, in which he expresses the religious purpose of his works and the hope that the common man may be the better for them. The poem gives the total of his poems (Spruchgedichte) as 1, 700, including 208 plays; it also mentions that he composed 13 tunes (Meistertöne) for the Guild of Meistersinger, but it is his sense of humour that has ensured that some of his plays survive in performance to this day.

Sachs's life was lived almost entirely within the confines of his native Nuremberg which combined the comfortable homeliness of a small compact city with considerable artistic and commercial activity. Dürer, Pirkheimer, and the sculptor in bronze Peter Vischer (c.1460-1529) were his contemporaries and friends. He combines a naïve homespun simplicity with an awareness of the problems of his day, exhibiting in his better works shrewd observation and good-humoured tolerance.

Despised in the 17th c., he was restored to prominence by Goethe in his poem Hans Sachsens poetische Sendung (1776), and, in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868), in which his personality is convincingly portrayed, was converted into a German legend.

Sachs's own edition of his works (Sehr herrliche schöne und warhaffte Gedichte, 5 vols.) appeared in 1558-79. Werke, ed. A. von Keller and E. Goetze, was published in 26 vols., 1870-1908, and reprinted in 1964.

This article refers to the poet. For other people of the same name, see Hans Sachs (disambiguation).

Hans Sachs

Hans Sachs (November 5, 1494 - January 19, 1576) was a German meistersinger ("mastersinger"), poet, playwright and shoemaker.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Works 2.1 Assessment 3 References 4 External links

Biography

Hans Sachs was born in Nuremberg (German: Nürnberg). His father was a tailor. He attended Latin school (German: Lateinschule) in Nuremberg. When he was 14 he took up an apprenticeship as a shoemaker.

After the apprenticeship, at age 17, he was a journeyman and set out on his Wanderjahre (or Walz), that is, wandering about and working here and there, for five years. He worked at his craft in many towns, including Regensburg, Passau, Salzburg, Munich, Osnabrück, Lübeck and Leipzig.^[1]

It is said that he decided to become a mastersinger in Innsbruck 1513. In the same year, he took up a kind of apprenticeship to become a mastersinger at Munich. Lienhard Nunnenbeck (a linnen weaver) was his master. In 1516 he settled in Nuremberg and stayed for the rest of his life. On September 1, 1519 he married Kunigunde Creutzer (*1512), who died in 1560. He married again September 2, 1561, this time the young widow Barbara Harscher. He had no known offspring.

The great event of his intellectual life was the coming of the Reformation; he became an ardent adherent of Luther, and in 1523 wrote in Luther's honour the poem beginning “The nightingale of Wittenberg, who is heard everywhere” (German: Die wittenbergisch Nachtigall, Die man jetzt höret überall), and four remarkable dialogues in prose, in which his warm sympathy with the reformer were tempered by counsels of moderation. In spite of this, his advocacy of the new faith brought upon him a reproof from the town council of Nuremberg; and he was forbidden to publish any more “pamphlets or rhymes” (German: Büchlein oder Reimen). It was not long, however, before the council itself openly threw in its lot with the Reformation.^[1]

Works

He wrote over 6000 pieces of various kinds; exact numbers vary widely in secondary literature, mainly because it is not always clear if a piece of writing should be considered an independent work or part of a larger context. Also it is hard to compare such sources because certain works may be put in different categories by different authors. His productivity is especially remarkable because he kept working as a shoemaker throughout his life.

He had to do this because as far as is known the Mastersingers did not as a common practice write or sing for profit

• Mastersongs (German: Meisterlieder) proper (about 4200)
• other poems/songs
• Carnival plays
• Tragedies
• Comedies
• Prose dialogues
• Fables
• Religious tracts, including “A wonderful prophecy from the Pope's tomb about how things will go with him up until the end of the world” (German: Eyn wunderliche Weyssagung von dem Babsttumb, wie es ihm biz an das endt der welt gehen sol) in collaboration with Andreas Osiander (1527)^[2]

Assessment

The mastersongs were not printed, being intended solely for the use of the Nuremberg Meistersinger school, of which Sachs was the leading spirit. His fame rests mainly on the “spoken poems” (German: Spruchgedichte) which include his dramatic writings. His “tragedies” and “comedies” are, however, little more than stories told in dialogue, and divided at convenient pauses into a varying number of acts; of the essentials of dramatic construction or the nature of dramatic action Sachs has little idea.

The subjects are drawn from the most varied sources, the Bible, the classics and the Italian novelists being specially laid under contribution. He succeeds best in the short anecdotal Fastnachtsspiel or Shrovetide play, where characterization and humorous situation are of more importance than dramatic form or construction.

Farces like

• Der fahrende Schüler im Paradies (1550)
• Das Wildbad (1550)
• Das heiss Eisen (1551)
• Der Bauer im Fegefeuer (1552)

have been played on the modern stage.^[1]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c}  "Sachs, Hans". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911. 
2. ^ The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, S.M. Jackson et al., eds., Funk and Wagnalls: New York, 1911, v. 10, p. 139.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Hans Sachs

• http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/autoren/sachs.htm (Some Works in German)
• http://www.fh-augsburg.de/~harsch/germanica/Chronologie/16Jh/Sachs/sac_intr.html (other works in German)
• http://www.ni.schule.de/~pohl/literatur/sadl/renaiss/sachs.htm (more works in German)
• http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/wagner/mstrsing/mstrsing.htm (R. Wagners Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg)

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