Hans Sachs

Hans Sachs , 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 (b Nuremberg, 1494; d Nuremberg, 1576). Ger. shoemaker and poet, foremost of Nuremberg Mastersingers. Wrote over 4,000 master-sch. poems and nearly 2,000 narrative and dramatic poems. His master-songs were pubd. in Das Singebuch des Adam Puschmann ed. Münzer (1906). Immortalized by Wagner in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1862–7).

Sachs, Hans (1494–1576), German dramatist, best known as the hero of Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868). He was a cobbler by trade, but from about 1518 poured out a stream of plays on subjects taken from the Bible, legend, history, the classics, and popular folklore, all treated in a prosaic and unhistorical way and employed for the purpose of moral instruction— Sachs was one of the first writers of his day to support Luther. Most of the tragedies are travesties, but the comedies—plays with happy endings but not necessarily humorous—are somewhat better. His fame rests chiefly on his Carnival plays, of which he wrote about 200, notable for their homespun humour and lively pictures of daily life. In them he turned the horseplay of the Fastnachtsspiel into a simple, amusing folk-play. The dialogue is natural and unforced and the rough-and-ready verse not unpleasing. Sachs trained his actors and directed his plays himself, adapting for the purpose a disused church, which thus became Germany's first theatre building.