SOURCE: Sobel, Eli. “Martin Luther and Hans Sachs.” Michigan Germanic Studies 10, no. 1-2 (spring-fall 1984): 129-41.

In the following essay, Sobel analyzes the influence that Martin Luther had on the works of Hans Sachs.

Hans Sachs was born in Nürnberg on 5 November 1494, the son of a master tailor. In 1501 he began attendance at a Latin school and stayed until 1508. Those seven years equal his total formal education. In 1509 he was apprenticed as a shoemaker and at about the same time he was introduced to the versifying art of Meistergesang by Lienhard Nunnenbeck, a Meister of the Nürnberg Singschule. At age 17, Sachs began his journeyman years during which he travelled to Austria, Bavaria, the Rhineland, the Netherlands and most of central Germany. Having passed his Meisterschuhmacher examinations, in 1519, he settled back in Nürnberg with his own shop, married and fathered seven children by his first wife, who...