[In the following essay, Sobel discusses the strengths of Sachs's early poems, including his use of images and symbols, which Sobel claims place Sachs among the best of Germany's post-medieval creative artists.]

That unique contribution to German literature known as Meistergesang has its beginnings in the late Middle Ages and achieved its heights in the sixteenth century mainly in the person of Hans Sachs of Nürnberg, the best known of the Meistersinger who have been brought to modern fame by Richard Wagner's opera. In Germany, in the time of the Renaissance and Reformation, it was guild craftsmen of the more sedentary occupations who chose to devote much of their leisure time to the production of verses, of Meistergesang.

Modern scholarship still tries to identify conclusively the beginnings of the genre in terms of the formal founding of the Singschule, the local Meistersinger clubs. Much is known from surviving manuscripts, but much remains to be explained. While the Meistersinger in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries continued, proudly, to claim direct descent from the great medieval courtly poets, the Minnesinger, their special art primarily concerned external features—methods and rules of versification, strict adherence to the regulations of the Singschule that even prescribed which subjects were permitted, and a formal apparatus for the presentation of their poems in the “singing competitions” (shades of the Middle High German Warburgkrieg) that were a regular part of the practice of the art.

The Meistersinger wrote religious poetry, poems of didactic and moralizing content, and tales in verse; much is in the manner of medieval poetry but with considerable enlargement of a complicated metrical system. When they did write poems employing the conventions of medieval lyrics, it is not surprising that they did so in almost totally inappropriate ways. In a sense, all of Meistergesang may be considered an allegory. The art—and it embodies both words and music—has contradictory and obscure origins. Yet the Meistersinger in the sixteenth century, both before and after the Lutheran Reformation, insisted on their medieval origins and derived their validity mainly by their adherence to the metrical inventions of “The Twelve Masters.” Even the number they chose has allegorical connotations: the twelve labors of Hercules, the twelve heroes in the Rosengarten epics, the twelve knights of the Round Table, and also the twelve apostles.

Lists of the “Twelve Masters” contain variants. Most are eminent Minnesinger such as Walther von der Vogelweide, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Heinrich von Meissen (Frauenlob), Der Marner, and Konrad von Würzburg. But there are notable omissions of prominent medieval German poets and curious inclusions of bourgeois artisans like Der alte Stolle, Der starke Boppe, and Bertolt Regenbogen. With such poetically noble forebears, Meistergesang had recourse to the past for its themes but not its society.

The poetry of the Meistersinger, however, no longer treated the favorite medieval themes of love, of the Crusades, or of joy in nature. Mainly the bourgeois poets looked to other sources and genres: songs in praise of the Virgin Mary, biblical prefigurations, saints' legends, medieval histories, and tales, fables, riddles, classical and other translations (particularly Boccaccio), Schulkünste (poems concerning the art and practice of Meistergesang), and allegories of all kinds.

Hans Sachs (1494-1576), master shoemaker and master singer of Nürnberg, compiled an anthology of Meistergesang during the years 1517-1518. It is a thick manuscript of 479 leaves containing 399 poems of which 234 are sine nomine and 165 texts are by thirty-one Meistersinger of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including forty of the earliest Meisterlieder by Sachs himself.¹

It is particularly noteworthy that the first of many allegorical poems Sachs wrote deals with the origins of Meistergesang. He composed it in 1516, in one of the four “Gekrönte Töne,” Bertolt Regenbogen's Langer Ton.² A Ton designation, which occurs in the heading of all Meisterlieder, designates the strophic form, the recognized metrical pattern in which the poem is cast. All subsequent texts composed in that Ton were under the double constraint of preexistent melody and strophic pattern. The text of this poem, analysed below, thus has a fixed form and pattern, by Sachs's choice of using a particular Ton. Regenbogen's Langer Ton consists of Gesätze (stanzas) in the fixed tripartite form, with twenty-three lines in each stanza. Since Sachs's poem consists of three stanzas the total length of the poem is sixty-nine lines.³

The ideas of the origins of Meistergesang in this poem are traditional, as is the garden image. The images and symbols within the poem, when applied to Meistergesang, are original with Sachs. There is no earlier treatment known of this use of the images. The poem opens telling of a magnificent garden built by a king whose twelve servants carefully tend the garden. Around the garden is a golden fence and in the fence are seven golden portals. Twelve well-pruned grape vines are in the garden, a three-branched tree, and a brown lily branch. There are violets and roses in profusion. In the middle of the garden a spring gushes, and it is masterfully directed everywhere within the garden so that all the fruits receive their strength from it. Whoever comes to this garden desirous of the fruits would find them bestowed upon him by the twelve servants, and the fruits have thus been distributed far and wide. But the king has many enemies, and they come like an army, pitch their tents around the garden, and block all the roads and paths; even though they themselves have no desire for the fruits they will permit no one to enter and those they seize are grieved.

The second stanza (Gesätz) tells of the significance of the garden; it represents Meistergesang, or, as Sachs calls it, the highly subtle art, and he goes on to explain other elements of his allegory: the king is the Holy Ghost from whom the art receives its origin. The twelve servants are The Twelve Old Masters, the golden fence is the Holy Writ and the seven golden portals are the Seven Liberal Arts. When one is in the garden, the grape vines represent the kinds of poems the Meistersinger write concerning their faith. The three-branched tree signifies songs to the Trinity, the lily is for songs of praise of the Virgin Mary. The violets and roses are the many courtly poems of The Twelve Masters. The spring signifies melody [music] and all the masterly Töne that can enrich the fruits. Whoever dedicates himself to this garden and this art, to him will soon fall the noblest fruits.

The third stanza (Gesätz) speaks of the enemies who surround the garden with their tents and who bar the roads and paths. They are described as those sinners who war against God and against the proper ways and are defilers. Their murderousness and envy are too prevalent in this world. They do not have the grace of God to learn the art of Meistergesang and that leads them to scorn and mockery when they hear a master sing; they are spoiled by their sins and take no heed of the fruits that stand in the noble garden. Whoever reflects on evil and sin, according to these evil people, deserves scorn for his wisdom and his art. Thus it is in the world, but the garden is preserved on earth by many an artistic man who constantly works at it. May the King give him His eternal reward there.⁴

The Meistersinger garden image, as noted, is not a Sachs invention. That the main aspects of his poem-allegory became common to practitioners of the art can be pictorially attested. The sixteenth-century Meistersinger used a Postenbrief (shield) to announce their meetings by publicly displaying a shield like the guild shields of the period, showing the symbols of the occupation or trade. Several have been preserved and described and bear many of the allegorical aspects of the Sachs poem. The shield from Iglau, painted in 1612, comes as close as any to matching the Meistergesang garden as described by Sachs: there is a garden enclosed by a wall, in gold, and over the gates of the wall hover the Seven Liberal Arts represented by allegorical figures. The Twelve Masters sit within the garden, about a table, and there is a fountain, the spring of poetic inspiration, Hippocrene.

On another table in the garden lies a Bible and around it are seated the leading local poets (the donors of the shield). In addition, there is a group of respectful persons listening to a Meistersinger. Outside the garden wall are several figures that symbolize the sins and unholy pleasures of the world. In one of five scenes on the upper edge of the shield the descent of the Holy Ghost is portrayed—the king of Sachs's poem. There are many other details and pictures on the shield that do not have direct applicability to the poem: scenes such as the birth and resurrection of Christ, David the Psalmist with his harp, and the garland and Davidgroschen regularly bestowed upon the winning Meistersinger at their competitions.

In the main the shield portrays the associations of the Sachs allegory. Surely the golden-walled garden is the rose garden of medieval courtly-heroic tradition, and the garden of the Song of Songs is there in spirit. The Bible, by its prominent and conspicuous position, is to buttress the poets against carnal and other evils outside the wall. The only aspect of classical antiquity is the well-spring, the fountain of the poets. And just as Sachs is well satisfied with those who would enter the garden and learn the art of Meistergesang, so the Meistersinger in the picture are portrayed as the good and happy, and prominent, citizens.

MS Berlin 414 contains many other poems of allegorical content. It is true that pre-Reformation Meistersinger wrote mainly on religious themes, but Sachs observed and learned much through his wide reading and his comparatively extensive travels and experiences during his years as a journeyman shoemaker. Thus it should not be surprising that his earliest anthology includes many poems with theme and content not ordinarily associated with this literary genre. In his collection of 1517-18 are such allegories as that of the knight on the white horse meeting Queen Venus; a dream allegory of a faithful and pure wife likened to a rare treasure; an allegory of the human soul and its faculties compared with the qualities of good wine.

Of seeming complexity and needing further explication is a Sachs allegory (fols. 463^v-464^v) dated 1518, concerning his meeting in a garden with Frau Societas, the daughter of Frau Dreÿ (=Treue= fidelity), who is great with child. Her face gleams with a sad beauty, her voice is like tht of the nightingale, and her right hand is wounded. She answers his questions and tells of herself: how she came into the garden of Frau Scientie and ate of the fruit superbia which made her pregnant; her unborn child is called Invidia. While she was in the garden of Frau Scientie, Frau Pervidia injured her hand and drove her out. But when she went home her mother also drove Societas out. She then went to Queen Simplicitas and attempted to hide her condition, but the queen saw that appeared to be a loss of maidenly honor, as well as the wounded hand, and banned Societas from the court. When she ends her story, Sachs offers her his troth and asks if she will pledge him hers. She smiles and beams with joy—and then he ends his poem saying that at that moment he woke up and found himself deceived and betrayed.

The over-all allegorical faith of the Meistersinger in their society and their art was a vital form of brotherhood that created and sustained the citizenship of its members. It must be noted that the rules of Meistergesang forbade publication of the poems. It was proper to pen copies and circulate duplicates (frequently with emendations) among fellow Meistersinger. The circle embraced only those willing to conform to the rules of the art that bound them.

These strictures against printing and publishing did not apply to the other literary work of Hans Sachs which was abundant: occasional poems, Shrovetide plays, dramas, verse fables and jests, over 6000 literary products in all.⁵ A shoemaker-poet of little formal schooling but wide reading, Sachs may be Germany's best representative of that post-medieval creativity that one usually associates with the much better known writers of Italy, France, Spain, and England in the sixteenth century.

Notes

1. He was age twenty-four at the time he completed the volume. The manuscript, known as MS Berlin germ. quart. 414, survived World War II and is now in the Westdeutsche Bibliothek.

2. On “Gekrönte Töne” and “Langer Ton” see Archer Taylor, The Literary History of Meistergesang (New York, 1937), pp. 70-71; on “The Twelve Masters,” pp. 36-44.

3. It occupies folios 32^r-33^r of MS Berlin 414. For a comprehensive discussion of the metrics of Meistergesang, and related matters, see Clair H. Bell, Georg Hager (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1947), Pt. I, pp. 124-172; see also Bert Nagel, Der deutsche Meistersang (Heidelberg, 1952), particularly the section “Poetik der Meistersinger,” pp. 26-38.

4. A version of the poem, with numerous variants and errors in transcription, is in Philipp Wackernagel, Das deutsche Kirchenlied (Leipzig, 1877), Vol. II, No. 1405.

5. Many of his Meisterlieder are now available in printed collections and scattered articles. His other works are collected in a twenty-six volume edition by Adelbert von Keller and Edmund Goetze.