The theater of Hans Sachs 1517-1565
Critical and annotated new edition of all carnival plays, comedies and tragedies including poems on similar themes
Today, Hans Sachs is regarded as the most productive, recognized and influential German-language poet of the 16th century. From his oeuvre of over 6,200 works, the theater stands out in particular with 203 play texts: these are characterized by dramatic quality, linguistic conciseness and lexical richness. To date, however, there has been no satisfactory edition, which has contributed to the fact that a considerable number of his plays have hardly been researched. The new project aims to remedy this situation. In order to shed light on the genesis of the plays, Sachs' master songs and proverb poems, which are similar in subject matter, are also included in the edition for the first time.
In cooperation
Project description
The inadequate edition of Sachs' mammoth work has long been criticized by researchers. However, a new edition of his entire oeuvre cannot be accomplished within the framework of a single editorial project. The project will initially edit Hans Sachs' 203 play texts (80 carnival plays, 64 comedies and 59 tragedies) at the Marburg and Siegen sites over a period of 7.5 years.
Sachs dealt with the same material in different forms of expression over a period of decades. The parallel edition of these thematically similar poems (approx. 235 Meisterlieder and approx. 85 Spruchgedichte) promises insights into the process of creating the plays.
A hybrid edition is planned: in addition to a digital transcription in the German Text Archive (DTA), a print edition with an e-resource will be produced, enabling both traditional hermeneutic approaches and machine searchability and further processing of the corpus.
The project pursues three goals:
- The edition is intended to provide a reliable basis for future literary, cultural, theater and linguistic research into the dramas of Hans Sachs.
- The detailed commentary will for the first time facilitate access to complex works and the understanding of difficult passages in the text.
- The inclusion of the thematically and materially analogous master songs (approx. 235) and proverb poems (approx. 85) will provide access to the genesis of Sachs' theatrical work as a powerful medium of popularization.
The completion of the edition will provide a new basis for future research into Sachs's dramatic texts and the theater of the 16th century, as well as the history of culture, knowledge and religion of the time in the various disciplines (including German studies, history, theology and the history of knowledge).
Everything at a glance
-
Duration
from 01.01.2026 -
Research area
Media and culture -
Cooperation partner
Philipps University of Marburg -
Funding
German Research Foundation (DFG): 2.6 million euros
Procedure
Capture
The text basis for the play texts and proverbs is the folio edition, for the master songs the autograph master song books. In addition, autograph manuscripts and prints from the composer's lifetime are also taken into account. In a first step, the actual text mass in the folio edition is to be recorded electronically (OCR process). The manuscripts are transcribed manually. The transcription is carried out according to the guidelines of the German Text Archive (DTA).
Preparation
It is planned to publish digital transcriptions in the DTA on an ongoing basis. The text archive has been operated by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities since 2007 and guarantees the long-term availability and searchability of the highly standardized and searchable data. The portal also allows the original and transcription to be displayed side by side, so that the digital edition can be used for electronic processing as well as access to the original spelling.
Edition & Commentary
The printed book offers the edited edition (normalized and corrected for obvious errors) together with a critical apparatus, passage commentary and work commentary. The printed version enables clear referencing and citation of pages and guarantees permanent preservation over a long period of time, regardless of a specific data format or technical progress. In addition, the print edition is also made available as an e-book, which allows for quick reference.
Materials and sample edition
Pilot project
As part of a pilot project, Hans Sachs' comedy Irrfart Ulissi mit den Werbern und seiner Gemahel Penelope, the first dramatization of the Odyssey in German (based on a translation by the humanist Simon Schaidenreisser), was edited by the project leaders in 2017 and made available in the DTA
as a digital resource.
Folio edition
The edition compiled by Sachs himself (5 volumes, 1st edition: 1558-1579) is available in digital form. His master songs were not printed. To this day, many of these are only accessible in the autograph master songbooks, some of which have been preserved and most of which are in the Zwickau City Archive.
Keller/Goetze edition
In addition to scattered individual and partial editions, the 26-volume edition of works (1870-1908)
by Adelbert von Keller and Edmund Goetze, which is closely based on the edition of his works in five folio volumes (1558-1579) supervised by Hans Sachs himself, remains the definitive edition. Like the folio volumes, it excludes Sachs' master songs. For these, researchers still have to refer to manuscripts in many cases.