SACHS, HANS. - German poet, the most famous of the “master singers,” born in Nuremberg on 5 November 1494, died there on 19 January 1576; author, among master songs, dramas, tales, farces, and carnival performances, of about 6,000 compositions, and initiator of dramatic art in Germany.
A shoemaker by profession, but endowed with a good and varied education that enabled him to find subjects in the most diverse sources (Biblical and classical antiquity, medieval legend, Romance novella literature, especially the Decameron), he “wrote poetry on everything and invented nothing” (J. Grimm). An enthusiastic supporter of Luther’s Reformation, H. S. filled his work with jests and mockery against the Catholic Church, its ministers and its rites, and with invectives against the alleged scandals of the papal court, with considerably less tolerance than his Protestant admirers acknowledge in him, but, in truth, never attaining the violence and vulgarity of other writers of the time. Unlike these, he maintained a rigorous moral line, scourging immoral conduct with vigorous sincerity.
Exalted to the skies by his contemporaries, later forgotten and despised, restored to honor at the end of the 18th century and praised also by Goethe, H. S. was a spirit endowed with singular gifts as a versifier and storyteller, which nevertheless do not suffice to make him a genius of poetry.