Hans Sachs

The poet and singer Hans Sachs (1494–1576) is not generally associated with the Reformation. For posterity, he is remembered above all as the most important representative of the Meistersinger (Mastersingers of Nuremberg). Sachs had first learned the shoemaker’s trade and practiced this profession for decades. From 1514, he wrote almost 4,300 secular, sacred and satirical master songs during a period of over 50 years. 2,000 of these songs are of religious content.

As a Nuremberg citizen, Hans Sachs was exposed to the Reformation at an early age, since it spread from the imperial city into large parts of Franconia. Sachs had been a follower of the Lutheran doctrine from c.1520. He built up a collection of reformatory writings and studied them over several years – apparently so intensively that he did not publish a single work from 1520 to 1523. Subsequently, Sachs began to publish master poems in which he vigorously advocated the Reformation. In particular, he wanted to prepare the new teaching for the “kleine Leute” (lower classes) in an easily comprehensibly way.