HANS SACHS. — German poet, the most famous of the Meistersinger, born in Nuremberg on 5 Nov. 1494, died there on 19 Jan. 1576; author, among master songs, plays, tales, jests and carnival representations, of about 6,000 compositions, and initiator of dramatic art in Germany.
By profession a shoemaker, but of good and varied culture which enabled him to draw his subjects from the most diverse sources (biblical and classical antiquity, medieval legend, romance novellistica, especially the Decameron), “he versified everything and invented nothing” (J. Grimm). Enthusiastic for Luther’s Reformation, H. S. filled his work with jests and witticisms against the Catholic Church, its ministers and its rites, and with invectives against the alleged scandals of the papal court, with rather less tolerance than his Protestant admirers grant him, yet without ever reaching the violence and vulgarity of other writers of the time. Unlike these, he maintained a rigorous moral line, energetically and sincerely castigating moral corruption.
Exalted by his contemporaries, forgotten and despised thereafter, rehabilitated at the end of the 18th century and praised even by Goethe, H. S. was a man of singular gifts as a versifier and storyteller, though these do not suffice to make him a genius of poetry.