Sachs, Hans

Sachs, Hans (häns zäks), 1494–1576, German poet, leading meistersinger of the Nuremberg school. A shoemaker and guild master, he wrote more than 4,000 master songs in addition to some 2,000 fables, tales in verse (Schwanke), morality plays, and farces. His Shrovetide plays, humorous and dramatically effective, present an informative picture of life in 16th-century Nuremberg. An ardent follower of Luther, Sachs wrote the poem "The Nightingale of Wittenberg" in Luther's honor. Many of his melodies were later adapted as Protestant hymn tunes. Hans Sachs is a principal character in several operas, notably in Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

---

Sachs, Hans 

Born Nov. 5, 1494, in Nuremberg; died there Jan. 19, 1576. German poet and composer.

Sachs attended a Latin school. In 1520 he became a master cobbler. He was an actor and the director of an amateur troupe. Expanding the poetic horizons of the meistergesang, he culled his subjects from life, from classical, medieval, and Renaissance literary sources, from popular books, and from anecdotes of the marketplace. Sachs wrote more than 6,000 works and was the author of the words and music for many songs. In his charming Fastnachtsspiele (Shrovetide plays), with their touching naïveté characteristic of popular literature, and in his Schwanken (short narrative songs), he depicted with humor the simple-mindedness of peasants, family quarrels, the profligacy of Catholic clerics, the riotous conduct of the lansquenets, and the amusing pranks of clever tramps. Best known are his farces The Schoolboy in Paradise and The Peddler’s Basket. Sachs condemned the growth of self-interest and the dissension among the princes, but his moralizing is not without philistine features. Sachs was the inspiration for the main character in operas by A. Jirovec, A. Lortzing (Hans Sachs, 1834) and R. Wagner (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, 1868).

WORKS

Werke, vols. 1–2. Edited by K. M. Schiller. Weimar, 1960.
In Russian translation:
Izbrannoe. Moscow-Leningrad, 1959.

REFERENCES

Istoriia nemetskoi literatury, vol. 1. Moscow, 1962.
Genée, R. Hans Sachs undseine Zeit, 2nd ed. Leipzig, 1902.
Geiger, E. Der Meistergesang des Hans Sachs. Bern, 1956.

B. I. PURISHEV