| articleBody
| -
Hans Sachs (1494-1576)
On November 5, 1494, German
Meistersinger (master singer),
poet, playwright, and shoemaker Hans Sachs was
born. His work is considered the most important testimony of the
bourgeois imperial town culture of the 16th century.
What is a Meistersinger?
What makes Hans Sachs so special –
although you might have never heart of him – is his profession as
being a ‘Meistersinger’. Actually, he is also the only
‘Meistersinger’ whose fame lasted over the centuries until today.
Now, what is a ‘Meistersinger’? You know that in the middle ages,
crafts and trade was organized as in guilds. And the Meistersinger
were a German guild for lyric poetry, composition and unaccompanied
art song of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. Probably you might
have heart of the medieval ‘Minnesingers’. The Meistersingers
carried on and developed the traditions of the Minnesingers. They
belonged to the artisan and trading classes of the German towns,
and regarded as their masters and the founders of their guild
twelve poets of the Middle High German period, including Wolfram
von Eschenbach, who authored the famous poem of Parzival. The
schools were established first in the 14th century in the upper
Rhine district, then elsewhere all over Germany. Nuremberg, under
the leadership of Hans Sachs, became the most famous school in the
16th century.
Strict Rules and Traditions
The Meistersingers had strict rules
for composition. The rules of the art were set down in the
so-called Tabulatur or law-book of the guild. The rules first at
all restricted the kinds of allowed poems and the parts of a
meistergesang, including permissible rhymes. Furthermore, the most
common mistakes were also recorded in the Tabulatur, concerning
errors of delivery, of melody, of structure and of opinion as well
as errors of rhyme or mangling of words or cacophony. The poets
paid much attention to the external forms of poetry. Thus, Poetry
of the Meistersinger was kind of a mechanical art that could be
learned through diligent study, not something relying on divine
inspiration.
Hans Sachs
Hans Sachs was born in Nuremberg as
son of a tailor, and as an early child he already attended a
singing school in the church of Nuremberg. He attended Latin school
and at age 14 he took up an apprenticeship as a shoemaker. To
become a master of his profession, after the apprenticeship, he had
to set out on his Wanderjahre (or Walz) as a journeyman, that is,
travelling about with companions and students. Over several years
he worked at his craft in many towns all over Germany, including
Regensburg, Passau, Salzburg, Munich, Osnabrück, Lübeck, and
Leipzig. In 1513 he reached the small town of Wels in Austria,
where he remained for a time, devoting himself to the cultivation
of the fine arts, where he joined the court of Emperor Maximilian I
in Innsbruck, who by chance was passing through this town. In 1516,
Hans Sachs took up a kind of apprenticeship to become a
Meistersinger at Munich, with Lienhard Nunnenbeck, a linen weaver,
as his master, before he left for Nuremberg, where he stayed for
rest of his life.
Legacy
It was the time of the Protestant
Reformation and Hans Sachs became an ardent adherent of
Martin Luther.[5]
In 1523, he wrote in Luther’s honor the poem beginning “Die
wittenbergisch Nachtigall, Die man jetzt höret überall (The
nightingale of Wittenberg, which is heard everywhere), and
four remarkable dialogues in prose, in which his warm sympathy with
the reformer was tempered by counsels of moderation. Nevertheless,
the town council of Nuremberg first didn’t share Sachs’ sympathy
with Luther’s reformation and he was forbidden to publish any more
“pamphlets or rhymes”. Overall, Hans Sachs was a rather prolific
artist. He wrote over 6000 pieces of various kinds. His
productivity is especially remarkable because he kept working as a
shoemaker throughout his life. After his death in 1576, Hans Sachs
soon fell into oblivion until the 19th century, when
Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe and Christoph Martin
Wieland, leading figures of German classicism, rediscovered
his work. Today, Hans Sachs is remembered best, because famous
composer Richard Wagner has made him
the leading character of his opera ‘Die Meistersänger von
Nürnberg‘.[4]
Sharon Baker, Strange Bedfellows!
Satire between the Covers of Hans Sachs’s
‘Der verdorben Edelman mit dem weichen Beht’, [11]
References and Further
Reading:
[1] Works of
Hans Sachs at Project Gutenberg (in original German
language)
[2] Hans
Sachs at the German National Library (GND entry)
[3] Hans Sachs at
Britannica Online
[4] Richard Wagner – Genius and
Megalomania
[5] Martin
Luther – Iconic Figure of the Reformation
[6] Dante Alighieri and the Divine
Comedy
[7] Andreas Gryphius – Master Poet
of the German Baroque
[8] Brush Up your
Shakespeare
[9] Heinrich
Heine – Famous Poetry with Radical Political Views
[10] Hans Sachs at
Wikidata
[11] Sharon
Baker, Strange Bedfellows!
Satire between the Covers of Hans Sachs’s ‘Der verdorben Edelman
mit dem weichen Beht’, (2021 Friends of
Germanic Studies at the IMLR Lecture), SchAdvStudy @
youtube
[12] Timeline of 1th century composers via
DBpedia and Wikidata
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
