SOURCE: Van D'Elden, Stephanie Cain. “Parodies of Coats of Arms by Peter Suchenwirt and Hans Sachs.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 81 (1980): 69-75.

In the following essay, Van D'Elden examines the differences between Sachs's and Suchenwirt's parodies of coats of arms, which Van D'Elden claims are a product of the expectations of each author's audience.

Schields decorated with liverwurst and bratwurst! Two parodies of coats of arms—“Von her Sumolf Lappen uon Ernwicht” by Peter Suchenwirt¹ and “Das wappen der vollen brüder” by Hans Sachs²—contain such unheraldic emblems. Suchenwirt's poem of 142 lines, written between 1350 and 1395, and Sachs' poem of eighty-five lines, dated 28 December 1540—poems separated by almost two hundred years—are among the few extant heraldic parodies; while the similarities in the blazon (i.e. technical description of a coat of arms) are striking, the differences in mood subtly reflect the changing times in which the two poets lived.

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