Hans Sachs
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"As the northern Italian city cultures, which Jakob Burckhardt described, exploded with sarcasm and Roman and Florentine wit rang shrill in their citizens' ears, Germany possessed, apart from Eulenspiegel, the plebeian protokynic of modern times, admittedly no Aretino but nevertheless a cobbler from Nuremberg who wrote droll stories: old Hans Sachs who, somewhat unjustly, is remembered as the progenitor of narrow-minded, middle-class humor."--Critique of Cynical Reason (1983) by Peter Sloterdijk |
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Hans Sachs (5 November 1494 – 19 January 1576) was a German Meistersinger ("mastersinger"), poet, playwright, and shoemaker. He is a leading character in Richard Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868).
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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 is an independent work or part of a larger work. Also, 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. (As far as is known, the Mastersingers did not as a common practice write or sing for money.) His works include
- Mastersongs (Template:Lang-de) proper (about 4200)
- other poems and songs
- Carnival plays
- Tragedies
- Comedies
- Prose dialogues
- Fables
- Religious tracts, including “A wonderful prophecy of the papacy about how things will go for it up until the end of the world” (Template:Lang-de) in collaboration with Andreas Osiander (1527).
Assessment
His mastersongs were not published, 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” (Template:Lang-de) which include his dramatic writings. His “tragedies” and “comedies” are, however, little more than stories told in dialogue, and are divided by convenient pauses into a varying number of acts. Sachs had little idea of the essentials of dramatic construction or the nature of dramatic action.
The subjects are drawn from the most varied sources, but particularly the Bible, the classics and the Italian novelists. He succeeds best in the short anecdotal Fastnachtsspiel or Shrovetide play, where characterisation and humorous situation are of more importance than dramatic form or construction.
Some of his farces have been played on the modern stage. Among these are:
- Der fahrende Schüler im Paradies (1550)
- Das Wildbad (1550)
- Das heiss Eisen (1551)
- Der Bauer im Fegefeuer (1552)
As a fictional character
Hans Sachs is the subject of an opera (1840) by Albert Lortzing. He is a leading character in Richard Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868).
See also
