HANS SACHS

HANS SACHS (1494-1576), a noted early German poet, born at Nürnberg; the son of a tailor, by trade a shoemaker; learned "the mystery of song" from a weaver; was a contemporary of Luther, who acknowledged his services in the cause of the Reformation; in his seventy-fourth year (1568), on examining his stock for publication, found that he had written 6048 poetical pieces, among them 208 tragedies and comedies, and this besides having all along kept house, like an honest Nürnberg burgher, by assiduous and sufficient shoemaking; a man standing on his own basis; wrote "Narrenschneiden," a piece in which the doctor cures a bloated and lethargic patient by "cutting out half-a-dozen fools from his interior"; he sunk into oblivion during the 17th century, but his memory was revived by Goethe in the 18th.