We have mentioned both Meistersingers and Minnesingers. It may perhaps not be superfluous to add a word or two on the difference between these. The Minnesingers flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They were mostly of noble birth, and, in an age when poetry and chivalry kissed each other, they exclusively cultivated the poetic art, living in kings’ palaces, or wandering from court to court, and composing and singing pure and beautiful little love poems, in which the meadows and flowers sparkle, as it were, in the sunlight of their song. Best known of these minstrels is Walter von der Vogelweide. He, during his wanderings, visited and sang in this old town at the Court of Frederick II., himself a Minnesinger. Heinrich von Meissen, surnamed Frauenlob, also visited Nuremberg, but he was the last of the Minnesingers, and was buried at Mainz, 1318. After his time the practice of German poetry devolved almost exclusively on the burgher and artisan class. Close societies were formed: the rules of poetry and singing were taught in their schools. Versecraft became one of the Incorporated Trades. The Sängerzünfte, or Singers’ Guilds, flourished chiefly at Augsburg, and on the Rhine at Strasburg, Mainz, and Worms. The Meistersingers, ever anxious, but all unable to clothe themselves with the fallen mantle of ancient glory, speak of the “Twelve old Masters” (including Tannhäuser, Walter von der Vogelweide, Wolfran, etc.), as having lived together and formed the first society of Meistersingers, under Otto I. The truth is that these Twelve Masters were Minnesingers, and did not live together. Longfellow’s phrase, “Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters,” cannot, therefore, be correctly applied to Hans Sachs. The Incorporated Poets, we must confess, though they derived many of their rules and metres from the Minnesingers, managed to degrade the old German Minnesinging to a close, artificial, and philistine art. The final pitch of absurdity was reached, when in 1646 was published Harsdörfer’s “Nuremberg Funnel, for pouring in the art of German poetry and rhyme, without the aid of the Latin tongue, in six lessons.” Succeeding ages have thanked Harsdörfer for that phrase. “Nürnberger Trichter” has passed into a proverb. The first celebrated master-singer of Nuremberg was Hans Folz (1470), whom Hans Sachs called a “durchleutig deutschen Poeten” (noble German poet). It is to be noted that the poems of the Meistersingers were always sung to music, and often had to be written to a particular tune. Hence the stringent rules made for their formation: hence, too, when prizes were given for the fewest mistakes in mere technique, the great attention paid to form and metre, and the gradual elimination of true passion and poetry. Nuremberg had always fostered music. The art of lute-making, as of organ-building, had found a home there. Borkhardt, the famous inventor of musical instruments, built the St. Sebald’s organ about this time. Conrad Gerler’s instruments, too, were much sought after. In 1460, for instance, we find Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, sending for three lutes for the players at his Court. An extremely good and interesting collection of old musical instruments will be found in the German Museum. In this connection should also be noted there a picture of the Meistersingers’ singing school.[50]
The reputation of the Nuremberg school of poetry and singing was greatly enhanced by Hans Sachs. Remarkable for his own personality and literary fertility, he was also famous for reducing all the rules of the Meistersingers to writing, in a code which lasted till 1735. But, in spite of his attention to rules, he, at any rate, showed some poetic and original talent. It is for this reason that Wagner makes him, in “Die Meistersinger,” recognise the real poetry in Walter, though the latter’s impassioned song does not conform with all the artificial rules of the Guild, mere paper rules which added nothing to the sound or rhythm of the words. For, as all the world knows, Hans Sachs has achieved a second lease of life on men’s lips, through the genius of Richard Wagner, dramatist, poet, satirist, and wonderful musician, who, in this opera, laughs at the conceit of the Incorporated Poets in assigning an extravagant antiquity to their Guilds, and at their pedantic sacrifice of matter to form. No more vivid and humorous picture of mediæval German life and of the people of quaint old Nuremberg has ever been drawn. Though “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” was not published till 1867, Wagner had already as early as 1851 sketched out the plan of an opera which was to display the triumph of genius and genuine passion over pedantry and conventionalism in art.
The passage[51] from “Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde” is worth quoting here.
“Immediately after the completion of this work” (Tannhäuser), he writes, “I was permitted to visit some baths in Bohemia to restore my strength. Here, as always, when I have been able to withdraw from the atmosphere of the foot-lights and my duties in the theatre, I soon found myself in a light and joyous humour. For the first time, and with artistic significance, a gaiety peculiar to my character declared itself. Capriciously, and yet not without some premeditation, I had determined a little time previously to write as my next work a comic opera. I call to mind that I had been influenced in arriving at this decision by the well-meant advice of good friends, who wished to see an opera of a ‘lighter kind’ composed by me, because this, they said, would open the German theatres to my work, and so bring about that success, the invincible want of which had undoubtedly begun to threaten my worldly circumstances with serious embarrassment. As, with the Athenians, a gay satirical piece followed on a tragedy, so suddenly there appeared to me, on that holiday journey, the picture of a comic play, which might suitably be attached as a satirical sequel to my ‘Battle of the Bards at Wartburg.’ This was ‘Die Meistersinger zu Nürnberg,’ with Hans Sachs at their head. Hans Sachs I conceived as embodying the last appearance of the artistically productive folk’s-spirit, and as such I opposed him to the vulgar narrow-mindedness of the master-singers, whose very droll, rule-of-thumb pedantry I personified in the character of the ‘Marker.’ This Marker, as is well-known (or as is perhaps not known to our critics), was the overseer appointed by the Singers’ Guild to ‘mark’ with strokes the faults against the rules committed by the performers, especially if they were candidates for admission to the Guild. Whoever received a certain number of strokes had versungen—failed in his singing.” (The singer sat in a chair before the assembly: the marker was ensconced behind curtains, and gave his attention chiefly to marking mistakes in singing, in Biblical history, in Lutheran German, in rhymes, music and syllables.) “Now the eldest of the Guild offered the hand of his young daughter to that master who should win the prize at an approaching public singing-competition. The marker, who has already been wooing the maiden, finds a rival in the person of a young knight, who, fired by reading the ‘Book of Heroes’ and the old Minnesingers, leaves the poor and decaying castle of his ancestors to learn in Nuremberg the art of the master-singers. He announces his candidature for admission to the Guild, being inspired thereto by a sudden passion for the Prize-Maiden, ‘whom only a Master of the Guild may win.’ He submits himself for examination, and sings an enthusiastic song in praise of women, which, however, provokes such incessant disapprobation on the part of the marker that ere his song is half-sung he has ‘failed in his singing.’ Sachs, who is pleased with the youth and wishes him well, baffles a desperate attempt to carry off the maiden, and thereby finds an opportunity of deeply annoying the marker. The latter, who, with a view to humbling him, has already been turning rudely on Sachs about a pair of shoes not yet finished, plants himself at night before the maiden’s window, in order to make trial of the song with which he hopes to win her by singing it as a serenade. By so doing he hopes to secure her voice in his favour at the adjudication of the prize. Sachs, whose cobbler’s shop is opposite the house thus serenaded, begins singing loudly as soon as the marker strikes up, because, as he informs the infuriated lover, this is necessary if he must keep awake to work so late: that the work is pressing nobody knows better than the marker himself, who has dunned him so mercilessly for the shoes! At last he promises the poor wretch to stop singing on condition that whatever faults he may find, in his judgment, in the marker’s song, he may be allowed to mark according to his shoemaker’s art—namely, with a blow of the hammer upon the shoe stretched on the last. Then the marker sings: Sachs strikes on the last again and again. The marker jumps up indignantly. Sachs asks him nonchalantly whether his song is finished. ‘Not nearly,’ he cries. Then Sachs laughingly holds up the shoes outside his shop, and declares that they are now quite finished, thanks to the ‘marker’s strokes.’ With the rest of his song, which in desperation he screams out without a pause, the marker fails lamentably before the lady, who appears at the window violently shaking her head. Disconsolate, he asks Sachs next day for a new song for his wooing. Sachs gives him a poem by the young knight, pretending not to know its source: only he warns him to secure an appropriate tune to which it may be sung. The conceited marker thinks he has nothing to fear in that respect, and sings the song before the public assembly of masters and people to a quite inappropriate tune, which so disfigures it that he once more and this time decisively fails altogether. In his mortification he accuses Sachs of having cheated him by providing so base a song. But Sachs declares the song is a very good one, only it must be sung to a suitable tune. It is then agreed that whoever knows the right tune shall be the victor. The young knight does this and wins the bride: but rejects with disdain the admission to the Guild now offered to him. Sachs humorously defends the Master-Singers’ Guild, and closes with the rhyme—
“Though should depart
The pride of Holy Rome,
Still thrives at home
Our sacred German art.”
The “Marker,” thus pourtrayed in The Meistersingers, is Sigs Beckmesser, who is one of those whom Hans Sachs mentions as having taught him. There is nothing remarkable in Hans Sachs being a shoemaker as well as a Meistersinger, for the Guild was chiefly composed of weavers and shoemakers. What is remarkable is that he was something of a poet as well as a Meistersinger.
The Guild had to get special leave from the Council each year to maintain their singing schools. This leave was sometimes refused, on the ground that the Masters sang lascivious songs, and bawled them rather than sang. Their meetings occurred principally in the Church of St. Catherine, after afternoon service on Sundays—usually once a month. Public performances took place thrice a year, at Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. The public were invited to these great assemblies by placards representing a rose-garden and David playing the harp before our Lord on the Cross. This placard also announced the subjects chosen and the forms of songs allowed on the occasion.
As an author, Hans Sachs was astonishingly prolific. Besides his songs, he wrote fables, eighteen books of proverbs, comedies, tragedies and farces (in which he himself acted). Altogether, the number of his works reached the huge total of 6205. Some of his plays—and some were in seven acts—were acted in the Marthakirche and some in the Rathaus. From Sachs’ time the drama began to make headway in Germany; but it was not till after his death that it received its first great stimulus, when the English strolling players began to come through Germany, acting Shakespeare’s plays among others no doubt, and the more blood-curdling scenes from Ford and Webster. In 1628 the Council provided for such performances by building the Fencing School, “for fencing and comedies” on the Schütt, next to the Wildbad.