SOURCE: Sobel, Eli. “The Earliest Allegories and Imagery of Hans Sachs: An Introductory Essay.” Yale French Studies 47 (1972): 211-17.

In the following essay, Sobel discusses the strengths of Sachs's early poems, including his use of images and symbols, which Sobel claims place Sachs among the best of Germany's post-medieval creative artists.

That unique contribution to German literature known as Meistergesang has its beginnings in the late Middle Ages and achieved its heights in the sixteenth century mainly in the person of Hans Sachs of Nürnberg, the best known of the Meistersinger who have been brought to modern fame by Richard Wagner's opera. In Germany, in the time of the Renaissance and Reformation, it was guild craftsmen of the more sedentary occupations who chose to devote much of their leisure time to the production of verses, of Meistergesang.

Modern scholarship still tries to identify conclusively the beginnings of the...