92 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters . 
do not appear to ns as its headwaters, but as little rivulets which 
join it at some distance below and are carried along without for 
a moment changing its original course. Dropping the figurative 
speech we shall be content to speak of Wagner’s literary precur¬ 
sors rather than of his sources. 
The most important of these is Johann Ludwig Franz Dein- 
hardstein. Born in Vienna, June 21, 1794—almost exactly three 
hundred years after Hans Sachs—Deinhardstein became professor 
of classical literature and aesthetics in the university of his native 
city in 1827, and in the same year wrote his Hans Sachs, Schau- 
spiel in vier Aufziigen. 12 From 1832 to 1841 he was vice-director 
of the Vienna court theater; from 1841 to his death, July 12, 
1859, dramatic censor in the same institution. His plays, col¬ 
lected in seven volumes, have gone to well-merited oblivion, and 
his stage versions of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and 
Twelfth Night have now been superseded by the originals on prac¬ 
tically all German stages. The only connection Deinhardstein 
still has with the modern stage is through his Hans Sachs, and this 
but indirectly, as the source of Lortzing’s comic opera. In its 
day Deinhardstein’s drama enjoyed an extraordinary success. 
The first performance took place at the Royal Court Theater of 
Berlin, February 13, 1828, preceded by a prolog which Goethe 
had written for the occasion (“Da steh f ich in der Fremde ganz 
allein”). How highly Goethe thought of Deinhardstein’s work 
is evidenced by the following lines: 
“Und wie auch noch so lange getrennt 
ein Freund den andern wiedererkennt, 
hat auch ein Frommer neuerer Zeit 
sich an des Vorfahren Tugend erfreut, 
und hingeschrieben unit leichter Hand, 
als stiind■ es farbig an der Wiand, 
und zwar mit Worten so verstdndig, 
als wurde Gemaltes wieder lebendig 
We no longer share Goethe’s high opinion of Deinhardstein’s 
drama. It probably was subconsciously due to the fact that Dein¬ 
hardstein here paid tribute to a figure that had meant so much to 
the youthful Goethe. And it must be conceded that owing to its 
unprecedented run on the stage it resuscitated and popularized the 
12 Conveniently accessible in Reclams Universal-Bibliothek, No. 3215. 
