Sachs, Hans (EN)

Sachs Hans, *5 November 1494 Nürnberg, †19 January 1576 Nürnberg, German poet and Meistersinger. After nine years of studies at a local school in 1501–09, he learned the shoemaking trade. In 1511–16, he toured Germany as a journeyman. After coming back to his city, he worked as a shoemaker and actively participated in a guild of Meistersingers (among others, as a judge in singing competitions), which he joined before 1511. L. Nunnenbeck was his teacher, and A. Puschmann, a Meistersinger from Wroclaw, was his student who first published Sachs’s songs (Zgorzelec, 1571).

Various works by Sachs have been preserved, including over 100 tragedies and comedies in verse, a few dialogues in prose and around 6000 poems, 4200 of which belong to the “Meisterlied” type. In these songs, Sachs used 275 melodic-versification models called “Meistertöne”; 13 of them are his own works, created in 1513–29 (the oldest records are in manuscripts, including autographs from Zwickau and Nürnberg).  They are called “Silberweise,” “Goldener Ton,” “Hohe Bergweise,” “Morgenweise,” “Gesangweise,” “Kurzer Ton,” “Langer Ton,” “Neuer Ton,” “Bewährter Ton,” “Rosenton,” “Klingender Ton,” “Spruchweise,” “Überlanger Ton”. Around 2000 Sachs’s songs were religious as he was an ardent glorifier of the Reformation. Sachs’s “Meistertöne” are kept in a typical for this genre bar form (Bar form – aab); however, in some of them (“Klingender Ton”), there is a melodic material from the beginning repeated at the verse end (with the so-called “stollen” – aaba). Compositions are kept in a syllabic style, yet there are often short melismas at the beginnings and endings of verses. Notation of these verses resembles white mensural notation. Most of the notes are semibreves, but some have a dot written after them, and some melismas have even smaller values (crotchets), which rhythmic interpretation of is ambiguous. The versification of Sach’s songs is exquisite. Individual lines of the stanza, which rhyme unconventionally, usually have a different number of syllables (from 1 to a dozen or so). In some poems, there are departures from the rules of classical meistergesang, such as the use of enjambment between stanzas. Over time, Sachs became an almost legendary figure, which was influenced, among others, by J.W. Goethe. The text of one of Sachs’s pieces (Ein Körbelmacher in ein Dorff) was composed for six voices by Orlando di Lasso, while R. Wagner and A. Lortzing made Sachs the hero of their operas.

Literature: K. Wedler Hans Sachs, Leipzig 1976; H. Husmann “Überlieferungsprobleme der Hans Sachschen Meistermelodien” Hans Sachs und Nürnberg, ed. H. Brunner and others, Nürnberg 1976; K. Ameln “Die „Silberweise” von Hans Sachs – Vorlage evangelischer Kirchenlieder?” Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie XXI, 1977; W.R. Berger Hans Sachs,  Frankfurt am Main 1994; Poet Hans Sachs. Leben – Zeit – Werk – Wirkung ed. G. Altmann, Dresden 1997; H. Kugler Meisterlieddichtung als Auslegeungskunst. Zur impliziten Poetik bei Hans Sachs, in H. Brunner’s festschrift, published by D. Klein, Wiesbaden 2000; U. Feuerstein “Derhalb stet es so uebel icz fast in allem regiment: Zeitbezug und Zeitkritik in den Meisterliedern des Hans Sachs (1513–1546)” Nürnberger Wekstücke zur Stadt- und Landesgeschichte VI, Nürnberg 2001; J.-M. Heinzmann Die Buhllieder des Hans Sachs: Form, Gehalt Funktion und sozialhistorischer Ort, Wiesbaden 2001; W. Neumann “Zum literarischen Kontaktfeld des Hans Sachs” Sangspruchtradion: Aufführung – Geltungsstrategien – Spannungsfelder, ed. M. Egidi and others, «Beiträge zur Mittelalterforschung» V, Frankfurt am Main 2004; N. Holzberg, H. Brunner Hans Sachs: Ein Handbuch, 2 volumes, Berlin-Boston 2020.