SACHS, Hans (1494-1576), the most eminent German poet of the 16th century, was born at Nuremberg on 5th November 1494. His father was a shoemaker, and Hans was trained to the same calling. Before beginning his apprenticeship, however, he was educated at the Latin school of Nuremberg. Having finished his “Lehrjahre” as a shoemaker, he began his “Wanderjahre” in 1511, and worked at his craft in many towns, including Ratisbon, Passau, Salzburg, Leipsic, Lübeck, and Osnabrück. In 1516 he returned to Nuremberg, where he remained during the rest of his life, working steadily at his business, and devoting his leisure time to literature. He married in 1519, and after his wife’s death he married again in 1561. He died on 19th January 1576....
Sachs was much respected by his fellow-citizens, and acquired great fame as a poet. Early in life he received instruction in the principles and rules of the “Meistergesang,” and at Munich in 1513 he completed his study of “the charming art.” Afterwards he wrote many poems in the formal manner of the “Meistersinger,” but to these efforts he attributed so little importance that he did not include them in his own collection of his works. Among his best writings are his hymns, in which he gave expression to the highest spiritual aspirations of the age of the Reformation. He was one of the most ardent adherents of Luther, and in 1523 wrote in his honour the poem beginning, “Die wittenbergisch Nachtigall, Die man jetz höret überall.” This poem attracted much attention and was of great service to Luther. Sachs also wrote in verse many fables, parables, tales, and dialogues. Of his dramatic poems, the most remarkable are his Shrove Tuesday Plays, in each of which he offers a lively representation of an action without any attempt at exact portraiture or at a profound appreciation of motives. Works of this kind were popular before Sachs’s time, but he gave them fresh vitality by his humour and fancy. Sachs had extraordinary fertility of imagination, and none of his German contemporaries approached him in his mastery of the forms of literary expression which were then known. He wrote thousands of poems, and in his lifetime a large number of them were printed, in three volumes; after his death two additional volumes appeared; and in recent times many volumes of his works in manuscript have been discovered. From about the middle of the 17th century, when German writers of verse became as a rule mere imitators of foreign models, Sachs was almost forgotten, until interest in his work was revived by Goethe; and many selections from his writings have since been published. A complete edition, prepared by A. von Keller, has been issued by the Literary Society of Stuttgart. A biography of Sachs by M. Solomon Ranisch was published in 1765, and there are later biographies by J. L. Hoffmann (1847), Weller (1868), and Liitzelberger (1874).
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