FISCHART, JOHANN. - Writer, born at Magonza (?) in 1546, died at Strasburgo in 1590. He was the most vigorous and independent German personality of the second half of the century, marked by resolute Calvinism and a militant attitude toward Catholicism, Jesuitism, and Lutheranism.
His extensive work consists partly of polemical writings of a confessional character (Der Binnenherb, 1579; Das Jesuitenhütlein, 1580, etc.), and partly—and here he excels—of satirical writings against his compatriots. In these he is the jester-judge, who amid laughter and jests speaks the harsh truth,
whether reworking in verse the popular book of the adventures of Till Eulenspiegel (1572), or attacking (in Aller Praktik Grossmutter, 1572) the evil practice of sorcery. His fame rests chiefly on the short poem Das gleichhaft Schiff von Zürich (1576; reprinted at Tübingen in 1828 with a preface by Uhland), but even more on the Geschichtsblitterung (1575), apparently a translation of Rabelais’s Gargantua, but in fact clearly distinct from it, not only through the transfer of the action to Germany, but also through its respect for religion and its purpose, not educational but moral. Remarkable is the use he makes in it of language, which he bends to every purpose, becoming almost a bridge toward the coming Baroque.