Hans Sachs (1494–1576) was a Reformation-era German writer best known as a

(or master singer, a type of German poet of the

guild) and for his carnival plays (

), but the sixteenth-century cobbler-poet — Sachs was by training and profession a shoemaker — also wrote works in other genres, including additional forms of poetry and drama, as well as farces and prose dialogues. The only surviving child of a well-to-do tailor’s family in Nürnberg, Sachs attended one of the imperial city’s four Latin (grammar) schools before his apprenticeship. The affluence of his family was not typical among craftspeople, nor was it exotic, but his schooling did foster in young Hans an atypical and lifelong love of the written and spoken word that was the…

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Citation: Miles-Morillo, Lynne. "Hans Sachs". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 July 2014 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13334, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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