SOURCE: Sobel, Eli. “Martin Luther and Hans Sachs.” Michigan Germanic Studies 10, no. 1-2 (spring-fall 1984): 129-41.

[In the following essay, Sobel analyzes the influence that Martin Luther had on the works of Hans Sachs.]

Hans Sachs was born in Nürnberg on 5 November 1494, the son of a master tailor. In 1501 he began attendance at a Latin school and stayed until 1508. Those seven years equal his total formal education. In 1509 he was apprenticed as a shoemaker and at about the same time he was introduced to the versifying art of Meistergesang by Lienhard Nunnenbeck, a Meister of the Nürnberg Singschule. At age 17, Sachs began his journeyman years during which he travelled to Austria, Bavaria, the Rhineland, the Netherlands and most of central Germany. Having passed his Meisterschuhmacher examinations, in 1519, he settled back in Nürnberg with his own shop, married and fathered seven children by his first wife, who died in 1560. At age 68 he married a 27-year-old widow who was his only survivor at his death at age 82, in 1576.¹ If these facts were all, his life would read like that of a typical bourgeois, independent craftsman who happened to live his adult life in the age of the Reformation, in the era of the upheavals that nominally have their beginnings with the posting of the ninety-five theses by Martin Luther.²

Sachs, however, was also a prolific poet, polemicist and dramatist. His writings and literary interests began early—long before he had ever heard of Martin Luther—and reveal him as a deeply religious and observant Christian. In 1517-18, he completed his first great manuscript, a huge anthology of Meisterlieder: 398 poems on 459 leaves. Included were forty of his own Meisterlieder.³ He had already, prior to 1518, published several Fastnachtspiele [Shrovetide plays] and numerous Spruchgedichte [gnomic or didactic poems]. In sum, and accepting the figures of his own Summa poem of 1566, by that year he had produced over 6250 pieces: 4275 Meisterlieder; over 1700 works in rhymed couplets; 208 Spiele (various drama- or play-form renderings); 73 spiritual songs; and only six surviving prose dialogues, the first four of which were all published in 1524, and were of major importance to the Lutheran movement. Even if all aesthetic considerations are disregarded, the literary legacy of Sachs is nevertheless of considerable importance for an understanding of the age of the Reformation: the several items Sachs published in the period 1523-27 (and some later ones) are of special significance to the course of the Reformation in his native Nürnberg and in Germany. This is so even though one may not ordinarily think to class Sachs with the leading scholars, with such as Philip Melanchthon, Johannes Cochlaeus, Erasmus or Willibald Pirckheimer. Sachs was talented, an avid reader and, for a shoemaker, a rather notable collector of books and ideas—including the Greek and Roman classics and Italian renaissance writers, even though in translation.⁴

Sachs knew the Bible and studied it closely. His very first poems (1514-15) are Bible-text based. In 1520 Sachs had begun to collect Luther's and Lutheran works. By 1522 Sachs owned, and surely had studied, forty such publications. Then, in a Spruchdichtung, dated 8 July 1523, in the Sachs manuscript, there appeared in print Sachs's Die Wittenbergisch Nachtigall / die man yetzt höret vberall.⁵ The first edition includes a prose preface which was the first printed evidence of Sachs's prose style and language. The brief prose superscription to the work clearly indicates his purpose in the long poem (700 lines) to follow: it is addressed to all lovers of evangelical truth … wishing God's grace and joy in Christ Jesus. The 90-line prose preface is complete with marginal glosses, New Testament references. In the preface Sachs relates the way in which the community of Christ had for long stood under the yoke of the papacy and the love of neighbor had been lost. But then Dr. Luther began to write, and Luther was not to be refuted!

The Wittenbergisch Nachtigall poem was an immediate success. The opening lines were much cited, particularly those that derive from one of medieval Germany's much-favored genres, the dawn-song—the Tagelied or Wächterlied, with the cry of the watchman:

Wach auf, es nahent gen den Tag
Ich hör singen im grünen hag [meadow]
Ein wunningliche [blissful] nachtigall.

In brief, the first 100 lines introduce the allegory: the sheep are lured from their shepherd by the false light of the moon and leave their meadow, following the voice of a lion. This leads them into an arid place where they have only weeds and thistles to graze on. In addition, the sheep were trapped and became the prey of the lion, along with snakes and wolves who aided the lion. The lion, however, begins to loathe the nightingale's dawnsong for it announces the end of the lion's authority. But he cannot silence the bird, nor can the creatures in his service do so—the swine, goat, cat, snake, others. None can silence the nightingale, and many sheep return to their meadow and shepherd even though the wolves continue to try to force them to dismiss from their minds the previous events of the moonlight hours.

Sachs, having told his animal fable, then begins his explanation: the nightingale is Dr. Luther who led the sheep away from the seducing moonlight that stands for the teaching of the sophists. The lion is Pope Leo X, the desert in which the sheep are trapped is the clerical horde, the Roman church. The thorns and thistles are the Church liturgy, and the nets and traps that hold the sheep are the decretals, the canon regulations through which fasts, confession, celibacy and other rules were introduced. The wolves are the army of priests who do all for money; the snakes are the monks and nuns who sell their supposed good works to the laity. In sum, all the practices of the Church that deal with good works are denigrated, held to have no basis in the Gospels. This is Sachs's main point of attack and his chief support of the new doctrine—justification and salvation by faith alone; blessedness comes through faith in Christ.

Then follows a narration of the historical course of the Reformation up to the date of Sachs's composition, and his explanation of the animals named in the opening portion; it is no longer fable or allegory as Sachs writes: “das wilde schweyn deut Doctor Ecken” “Der Bock deuttet den Emser” “So bedeuttet die Katz den Murner” “Der Waldesel den Barfusser [Franciscan] zu Leipzig” “So deut der Schneck den Cocleum.” These five Sachs singles out, with appropriate scornful descriptions of their activities, because they had written against Luther. But Sachs, master poet and now polemicist, has not finished with the animal figures he had introduced: the frogs are the higher schools whose scholastic erudition is now threatened; the wild geese are the conservative laity who wish to hold on to their inherited faith because it was good for so long and they therefore delay their judgment on whether it will still longer suffice.

This gives Sachs the theme for the closing portion of the poem: now that the truth has come to light, nothing of the old forms and customs will help. The bishops and certain worldly persons will try to exterminate the new teaching, but they are the servants of the Antichrist. Christ had prophesied their attacks, and the end of the Antichrist had long been announced in the Revelation of John. Babylon is now ripe for destruction because of the sins of its people; Babylon is Rome! Christians, return to Christ the Shepherd; let Christ be your comfort and consolation. Sachs's marginal glosses to the poem include, this time, not only biblical references but also quite specific historical data, references to diets, edicts, events pertinent to the Lutheran controversy and the publications of importance to his position—a remarkable display of erudition and wide reading by a shoemaker.

The published poem, with its woodcut title illustration of a nightingale safe in a tree surrounded by the animals, achieved seven editions within the year it appeared: four in Nürnberg, two in Zwickau and one in Eilenburg. The publication of the Wittenbergisch Nachtigall marked an end to the only sizable hiatus in Sachs's writing career—from 1520 to 1523. That he had three seemingly fallow years may be explained in several ways: he was newly-wed, in 1519, and as a good Bürger and husband he was busy with household and domestic concerns. Also, he had acquired forty of Luther's own and other Lutheran publications. According to Sachs's own inventory of his books, he also owned a pre-Luther New Testament, as well as the “Bibel, der erste Teil und der zweite Teil. Wittenberger Druck.” He certainly had enough to read and study over two years. With the poem of 1523, Sachs, by his poetic support of the Reformation, became a notable figure—and not only in his native Nürnberg. Henceforth Sachs's coinage for Luther as the nightingale of Wittenberg was an adman's dream, a press agent's victory.

But, also in 1523, Sachs had composed a Meisterlied, practically unknown and available only in manuscript until 1941, titled “Die Nachtigal.”⁶ It is set metrically in Sachs's own Meisterton, the “Morgenweis,” and consists of three Gesätze (tri-partite stanzas) of 27 lines each: a total of 81 lines, and greatly contrasting in size with the 700 lines of the published Spruchdichtung. Obviously, just as Sachs's enthusiasm for the new evangelical teachings had been growing, he wished to share this growth with others. But the publication of Meisterlieder was forbidden by the Schule rules and the “Nachtigal” Meisterlied was, therefore, available only to members of the Singschule and in manuscript form. The 700-line printed version of course allowed for expansions of many kinds: the addition of biblical citations, the political and historical glosses, eloquent and colorful interpretations.

Incidentally, the Meisterlied should not be titled “Das Walt Gott,” an error in recent editions that, alas, may be perpetuated. It is true that those words appear above the Meisterlied, but they are only the pious ejaculation of Sachs as he begins work on a new, blank volume to be initiated into his personal collection [Mg 2]. In every one of Sachs's Meisterlied manuscripts, the first line in each poem heading invariably announces the Ton or Weise; this one being:

In der Morgenweis Hans Sachsen

then, without exception, follows the poem title, this one being:

Die nachtigal.

The word Wittenberg occurs only in lines 6-9 of the second Gesätz, when Sachs writes that the nightingale is he who sings out the coming of a new day, Dr. Martin Luther of Wittenberg.

The idea of the “singer of the night” has a long literary history from the classical world. The nightingale, in Greek legend, is the metamorphosed Procne bewailing the son she killed, and its song was so greatly admired that it became a symbol for singers and poets, along with the idea that the nightingale would rather die than stop singing.

Sachs, encouraged by the enthusiasm that greeted his Wittenbergisch Nachtigal and having developed a following of readers, now turned to a new, for him, literary form, the prose dialogue. In his lifetime he was to produce only seven such works.⁷ The first four (all published in 1524) are the ones that concern Luther, the evangelical movement and the course of the Reformation in Germany. Their literary value is of no great consequence. They are valuable as demonstration of what Sachs considered the essentials of Luther's teachings. That they are in the vernacular immediately sets them apart from the Latin humanistic dialogues of the religious battles. In brief, the first two of the Sachs dialogues are polemics against the practices of the Roman church and Sachs's defense of the new faith. In the third dialogue, the Schuster becomes truly a “bible thumper.” He criticizes certain Lutherans and their Christian attitudes. The fourth dialogue is Sachs's attack against Lutheran zealots. He wants all Lutheran followers to teach their opponents, the Roman church adherents, by their own Christian behavior; evangelicals must not harden others by their fanaticism and thus foster anti-Lutheranism and attacks on the evangelicals.

The first dialogue, in short title, is a “Disputation zwischen einem Chorherrn und Schumacher,” that consists of 12 leaves, quarto, with title-page woodcut beneath which are quoted the lines of Luke 19, 40: “I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.” This first dialogue even achieved Dutch and English translations in the sixteenth century. The English version of 1547 is by Anthony Scoloker of Ipswich, A goodly dysputacion betwene a Cristen Shoemaker and a Popysshe Parson, with two other parsons more, done within the famous citie of Norembourgh. There is evidence, in addition, that an earlier English edition existed, for in the Index of Prohibited Books prepared by the Bishop of London under Henry VIII, dated July 7, 1546, there appears the entry: A Godly disputation betwene a Chrysten Shoemaker and a popish persone.⁸

Sachs's first dialogue was an obvious best-seller in Germany: eleven editions appeared in 1524, one of them in Low German. The bourgeois Schuster, the lay-person who is told by the Chorherr to stick to his trade, ably—even brilliantly—defends his position. His telling argument, in sum, is that the clerics who place the writings of the scholastics, canon law and papal decretals above all, and who do not know the Bible, the evangelical message, are not qualified to teach the gospel to the laity. The Roman clerics, in their blindness, do the opposite to what the Bible teaches and thus it becomes the duty of the laity to teach themselves from the holy scriptures, uncontaminated by the Roman clerics.

The thrust of the dialogue is perhaps best illustrated by an exchange early in the piece when the canon relates that he has just returned from his country house where he fed his nightingale who in this season was not singing. The Schuster says: “Ich weiß ein schumacher der hat ein Nachtigal, die hat erst angefangen zu singen.” The canon replies: “Ey, der Teufel holl den schuster mitsampt seiner Nachtigall! Wie hat er den aller heyligsten Vater, den Bapst, die heiligen väter vnnd vns wirdige herren ausgeholhipt [maligned] wie ein holhyp bub [baker's apprentice].” When the canon is asked if he has a copy of the Bible, the canon tells his cook to fetch the “große alte Buch” and she brings him the decretals, then, after correction, the Bible—after she has first wiped the dust from it! When the Schuster refers the canon to a particular text, the canon retorts that the Schuster should look it up himself for he, the canon, knows much more useful things to read. The satiric treatment, the telling thusts, undoubtedly had great popular appeal.

The second dialogue, in short titled, “Ein Gesprech von den Scheinwercken der Geistlichen,” consists of 8 to 10 leaves (in variant editions), quarto, with title-page woodcut and beneath it lines from II Timothy, 3, 9: “for their folly shall be manifest unto all men.” This dialogue was also greatly popular, and achieved eight editions in 1524, and one, with greatly expanded title, over a century later, in 1629. The woodcut of the 1524 editions shows two men, Peter and Hans, sitting at a table. Entering through a door and approaching the seated men are two mendicant monks.

The dialogue is basically concerned with the monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. When the monk says he hopes to obtain salvation through leading the monastic life, Hans confronts him with the emphasis on faith and advises the monk to leave the monastery. Hans keeps describing the uselessness of the monk's calling and reminds the monk of the consoling promises made by Christ. At the conclusion, Peter gives the monk a gift of two candles with the reservation that they not be used to read Scotus and Bonaventura but rather to read the Bible—and the monk agrees. Sachs's main thrust is that the monastic vows are not biblically derived. While the first dialogue attacked unworthy priests and their dogma, the second is directed against the ecclesia militans, the monastic orders, the main supporting agencies of the spiritual power of Rome. The old monk, although not prepared to give up his monastic life, even though he is prepared to acknowledge the errors of monastic individuals, agrees to think seriously about leaving his order. This, of course, involves the social aspects for him and illustrates how seriously Sachs, a good shoemaker, considered the sociological effects of the Reformation and the new teachings as a new way of life for those many in the Church.

The dialogue imparts a certain fairness to both sides, and also perhaps prefigures the thrusts of dialogues 3 and 4 that were to appear later, but within the same year, 1524. In the opening lines of the second dialogue the monk says: “Ich hör wol ir seyt Lutherisch.” Peter, who is sitting with Hans, replies: “Nain, sonder Euangelisch.”

The third dialogue, in short title, “Vom Geytz und anderen offentlich Lastern,” consists, in various editions, of 8, 10 or 14 leaves, quarto, with title-page woodcut and beneath it the lines from Ephesians V, 3: “… fornication and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints.” Seemingly this was the least popular of the Sachs dialogues of 1524, and achieved only four editions. The woodcut is of two men at a table with coins and a purse, to the right sits the Junker Reichenburger and to the left stands the priest, Romanus, who is pointing at the coins. This dialogue, unlike the three others of 1524, begins with a 30-line dedicatory preface, addressed to Hans Odrer zu Preßla [Breslau].

It is necessary to be aware that the word Geytz, in the title and the preface, meant to Sachs more than avarice. It had an amalgamated meaning of selfishness and self-interest, covetousness and all forms of base manipulations.

The content of this dialogue is mainly an exchange of volleys concerning money. Romanus is upbraided with the charge that his church and its dealings are all a fraud, all for the sake of money. But Romanus soon has Reichenburger cornered with his arguments that describe the manipulations of trade and commerce that make the evangelicals guilty in many ways: cornering of foodstuffs for extra profit, monopoly and cartel practices, short weight, damaged goods foisted on innocent customers—are such things in accord with the Gospels? But Romanus has more, especially about taking unchristian advantage of employees and lending money at interest. Reichenburger has no suitable reply; none, even when Romanus says how little charity for the poor is given even though the Bible commands it; in other words, the evangelicals have only the evangelical word and not the works or deeds.

Reichenburger speaks hopefully of the time when the preaching of the gospels will change people but Romanus counters that ages have gone by without bearing fruit. In sum, Sachs is aware, and much concerned, that the evangelicals have not yet learned to live good Christian lives nor cast off their sinful ways. Sachs makes quite clear how aware he is of the weaknesses of the new evangelicals—he expects and calls for a renovation, a reformation of their inner and outer lives.

The fourth dialogue, in short title, “Vom ergerlich Wandel etlicher die sich Lutherisch nennen,” consists of 8 or 12 leaves, quarto, with a title-page woodcut and beneath it the lines from II Corinthians 6, 3-4: “Giving no offense in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed: but in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God.” The woodcut is of two friends, Hans and Peter sitting at a table as the Catholic Meister Ulrich enters with rosary beads in his hands. Sachs again achieved a best-seller. Eleven editions were printed, probably all in 1524, although some printings are undated.

In this dialogue, Peter is the Lutheran Christian who inclines to uncritical acceptance of all the Lutheran innovations while Hans, the evangelical Christian, carefully analyzes the usefulness of each point, does not wish to offend those holding to the old faith, and hopes to win them over by teaching and even meeting them part way. The diverse positions of Peter and Hans are immediately apparent in a discussion about eating meat on Friday, as Peter describes how he did so in the presence of his father-in-law, Meister Ulrich, a Catholic, who became angry. This gives Hans the opening to defend his evangelical position—and enter Meister Ulrich. To Ulrich, Peter is a heretic, not the Roman clerics Peter attacks. Hans pleads that the words of Christ should prevail and that loving your neighbor is what matters. Peter counters that he only follows Luther's examples, but he is checked by Hans who says that people such as Peter use Luther only as a cover for their misdeeds. The conclusion is that only through love will one know the true faith—Hans' position—and Meister Ulrich is convinced and prepared to attend Lutheran services. Hans is not a fanatic, not a rabble-rouser. He does not approve of zealots who seek violent confrontation. For him life must be a truly evangelical experience. And that is how Sachs formed and lived the rest of his life, as profusely attested by his writings.

In the four dialogues Sachs's “Christian” position is unique among all the other vernacular, pro-Lutheran publications. Sachs is a battler for reform, for the way an evangelical Christian must act, that the new teachings be upheld in life. The third and fourth dialogues give us Shoemaker Hans as a model for the Gospel message, a reminder and call for living a proper life—and not a call to theological battle. Sachs had a “this world” ethic. He truly felt himself secure in his humanism plus protestantism—a bourgeois sense of worthiness.

In 1523, Martin Luther, in his Formula missae, and in several letters pleaded for songs as part of his reform of the Catholic mass and other liturgical services. He appealed to the poetae germanici for cantilenas, to be put at his disposal, quae dignae sint in ecclesia Dei frequentari.⁹ And Hans Sachs came through! His German hymns, songs and psalms to replace the Latin of the Roman church began to appear: in 1525, “Etliche geistliche, in der Schrift gegrünte Lieder für die layen zu singen.” All eight Sachs songs that first appeared in printed pamphlet form were almost immediately included in the Nürnberg Enchiridien of 1525 and again in 1527. They were included in the Wittenberg Gesangbuch of 1533 and later editions, as well as in the later Nürnberg and other hymnals.

In 1525, Sachs published a collection of thirteen psalms, including the notation of four of his own musical settings—his musical skills having been developed in his musical inventions of Meistertöne for his original Meisterlieder. Each of Sachs's vernacular psalm renderings is in 7-line verses, with his treatments ranging from three to nine stanzas. His psalm versions were taken, in toto, into the Nürnberg Enchiridion of 1527.

In that same year, 1527, Sachs got involved in a publication that was to bring him an official rebuke from the Nürnberg city council and an official order that the work be suppressed.¹⁰ All unsold copies were confiscated from the printer, as well as the 30 woodcut blocks used in the publication. Nevertheless, there were three further editions published in 1527; two without place of publication and one in Oppenheim. It is a modest volume: 18 leaves, quarto, including the 30 woodcuts. The conception of the work began with Andreas Osiander, one of Nürnberg's most fiery Lutheran preachers. The stimulus to Osiander to produce such a volume, according to Osiander's prose preface, was an old collection of woodcuts from the Carthusian cloister in Nürnberg. The woodcuts depicted, according to Osiander, the inner and outer degeneration of the papacy. Sachs's contribution to the volume, written on the persuasion and urging of Osiander, Lutheran preacher at St. Sebald's Church, was 4-line verses under each of the 30 woodcuts as well as a 29-line concluding poem. Up to 1527 Sachs had played a comparatively passive role and was only indirectly involved in the learned disputes of the theologians. The verses by a shoemaker who dared, in print, to enter a purely theological dispute were unusual, a challenge at least, if not pure provocation. The Nürnberg city council, on 27 March, 1527, put it to Sachs officially; he was summoned to appear and told: “Nun sey solichs seynes ampts nit … darumb eins raths ernster bevelch, das er seins handtwerks und schuechmachens warte …”¹¹ A shoemaker truly told to stick to his last!

The City Council edict had its effect, for in the next few years Sachs published little, although he continued to write as avidly as ever. His polemics in the cause of the Reformation then took a different turn. He now championed the new teachings, to spread the seeds of the Reformation, to protect and improve what had been won. He reworked biblical materials, especially the Gospels, to enhance the Protestant teachings. In a Spruchgedicht of 1535, his adherence to the basic Lutheran position is clear, in lines such as:

der Glaub ist das ganz firmament
ein ursprung andrer gaben allen

in a poem that concludes:

der warhaft glaub, der ist die wurz
der gibt uns Gott genzlich zu eigen.(12)

The poems of this period in no way enter the theological controversies; nothing of the transsubstantiation dispute, nothing of the Lutheran-Zwinglian dispute. Sachs writes on the moral consequences of faith, on the moral virtues rather than on dogma.

The close of a Spruchgedicht of 1539 perhaps most aptly illustrates what Sachs saw had occurred to God's word:

erstlich von der Maulchristen
darnach von romanisten
und den religiosen
sind eines tuchs drei hosen.(13)

[“Die gemartert Theologia”]

He sought the pure teaching of the gospels, especially in the schools, as the prognostic of Judgment Day.

When Sachs learned of the death of Luther, he composed, on 22 March 1546, “Ein Epitaphium oder klagred ob der Leich Dr. Martin Luthers,” a Spruchgedicht of 100 lines in the form of a dream sequence in which Sachs narrates how he suddenly felt saddened on the seventeenth of February and fell into a deep sleep and dreamt: he was in a temple and saw a covered casket; on the cover a shield with a rose and cross. As he looked and feared Luther's body might be in the casket, the white-clad figure of Dame Theology approached the bier and lamented the death of the man who had saved her from her enemies, and rescued her from her “Babylonian Captivity.” When her troubled question arose about who would now be her champion, the poet—Sachs—consoled her with the words that God himself had taken her into His protection, and that many good men were yet alive to defend her, though Luther had gone to his eternal rest.¹⁴

With the death of Luther this particular account of the Sachs works must end. Sachs wrote thousands of pieces: tragedies, comedies, Fastnachtspiele and didactic poetry. His Bible was his greatest source, themes from the Old and New Testaments, the Psalter, the books of the Apocrypha. What before Luther had been saints' legends, greetings to Mary, rosary songs and the like were adapted—and the old works revised—to the new Lutheran teachings. Sachs's dramas, in later life, almost invariably dealt with Bible subjects such as Tobias, the Fall, John the Baptist, Job, the judgment of Solomon, the passion of Christ.

Sachs obviously strove to convince the lay reading or theatre-going German public that the message of the gospels was not a call to theological battle but rather a call and constant reminder to live a proper life. The Wittenbergisch Nachtigal and, especially, the fourth dialogue must not be read as the works of a visionary or a fanatic but rather as polemical literature written under the influence of the Lutheran ethic, as Sachs understood it. Sachs lived and wrote of the new evangelical way of life with a bourgeois faith in the state. He held firmly to the idea that “man is born to work as the bird is to fly,” with freedom of conscience and the surety of faith.¹⁵

Notes

1. On Nürnberg in the 16th century, see Gerald Strauss, Nuremberg in the Sixteenth Century (New York: John Wiley, 1966). See also Steven E. Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1975), and Gottfried Seebass, “The Reformation in Nürnberg,” in The Social History of the Reformation, eds. Lawrence P. Buck and Jonathan W. Zophy (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1972), pp. 17-40.

2. The earliest biography of Hans Sachs is by M.S. Ranisch, Historisch-kritische Lebensbeschreibung Hanns Sachsens (Altenburg: B. Richter, 1765). For more recent biographical works, among many others, see Rudolph Genée, Hans Sachs und seine Zeit: Ein Lebens- und Kulturbild aus der Zeit der Reformation (Leipzig: J.J. Weber, ²1902), and Barbara Könneker, Hans Sachs (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1971), especially the bibliography, pp. ix-xviii.

3. Eli Sobel, “A Hans Sachs Anthology: The Meistertöne of MS Berlin germ. quart. 414,” Diss. Univ. of Calif., Berkeley, 1947. See also Frances H. Ellis, The Early Meisterlieder of Hans Sachs (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Studies, 1974).

4. On January 28, 1562, Sachs compiled, in manuscript, a catalogue of his personal library. For a printed reproduction of his holdings, see Erich Carlsohn, “Die Bibliothek von Hans Sachs,” in an appendix [unnumbered pages] to Emil Weller, Der Volksdichter Hans Sachs und seine Dichtungen (1868; rpt. Wiesbaden 1966).

5. Text availabe in A. von Keller and E. Goetze, eds., Hans Sachs Werke, vol. VI, pp. 373 ff. This edition of Sachs's works (hereafter cited as K-G) consists of 26 volumes published in the Bibliothek des Litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart (Tübingen, 1870-1908). See also Hans Sachs: Die Wittenbergisch Nachtigall, ed. Gerald H. Seufert (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1974) for a reprint with woodcut of the 1st edition and commentary. See K-G, vol. 25, p. 9, for Sachs's entry in one of his privately-bound volumes: “Diese puechlin [40 Luther tracts and sermons] habe ich Hans Sachs gesamelt, got vnd seinem wort zw eren vnd dem nechsten zw guet ainpünden lassen, als man zelt nach christi gepurt 1522 jar.” In 1522, Sachs also owned and recorded as two items in his personal library: “Bibel, der erste Teil. Wittenberger Druck.” “Bibel, der andere Teil. Wittenberger Druck.”

6. Frances H. Ellis, Hans Sachs Studies I: Das Walt got, A Meisterlied with Introduction, Commentary, and Bibliography, Indiana Univ. Publications, Humanities Series No. 4 (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1941).

7. For the dialogues and excellent critical text apparatus, see the edition by Ingeborg Spriewald, Die Prosadialoge von Hans Sachs (Leipzig: VEB Bibliographisches Institut, 1970). For analytical treatment of the Sachs dialogues and other works, see Bernd Balzer, Bügerliche Reformationspropaganda: Die Flugschriften des Hans Sachs in den Jahren 1523-1525, Germanistische Abhandlungen 42 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1973), with comprehensive bibliography on pp. 219-231.

8. See Spriewald, Die Prosadialoge, p. 14, and Mary Beare, “The Later Dialogues of Hans Sachs,” Modern Language Review, 53 (1958), 197-198. For an account of the Reformation epoch, see Barbara Könneker, Die deutsche Literatur der Reformationszeit: Kommentar zu einer Epoche (München: Winkler, 1975), with outstanding bibliography, pp. 184-269.

9. WA 12, 218. Luther's desire for songs in German is also expressed in a letter to Nicolaus Hausmann in Zwickau (1523): “… so irgend teutsche Poeten wären … uns geistliche Lieder zu machen. …” German translation, from the Latin, in J.B. Riederer, Abhandlungen von der Einführung des deutschen Gesanges in die evangelische Kirche (Nürnberg, 1759), p. 34, and see p. 96 for a Luther letter to Georg Spalatin: “… daß das Wort Gottes auch durch den Gesang unter den Leuten bleibe.”

10. Eyn wunderliche Weyssagung von dem Babstumb / wie es yhm biß an das endt der welt gehen sol / jnn oder gemäl begriffen / gefunden zu Nurmberg ym Cartheuser kloster vnd ist seer alt. Eyn vorred Andreas Osianders … Welche / Hans Sachs yn teutsche reymen gefast / vnd darzu gesetzt hat (Nürnberg: Hans Guldenmundt, 1527).

11. For the text of the Council edict, see Gerhard Hirschmann, “Archivalische Quellen zu Hans Sachs,” in Hans Sachs und Nürnberg: Bedingungen und Probleme reichsstädtischer Literatur, eds. Horst Brunner, Gerhard Hirschmann, and Fritz Schnelbögl (Nürnberg: Verlag des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg, 1976), pp. 43-44.

12. K-G, vol. I, p. 353.

13. K-G, vol. I, p. 338.

14. For the text of the Luther epitaph, see K-G, vol. I, pp. 401-403. For a version in modern German, see Rudolf J. Weickmann, Hans Sachs (Schwabach: Peter Gersbeck, 1976), pp. 40-42.

15. See the Sachs citation and rendering of Job V, [7], in his Dialog von den Scheinwerken der Geistlichen, p. 119, ll. 554-559, in Spriewald, Die Prosadialoge. Sachs surely used the Luther Bible translation: “… wie die Vögel [italics added] schweben empor zufliegen.” The King James version of Job V, 7, reads: “… as the sparks [italics added] fly upward.” The Masoretic text, in English translation, also reads sparks and not birds—further evidence of Sachs's knowledge of Luther's Bible translations, his familiarity with Luther's works.