100 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
the natural and organic result of a battle royal that Walter von 
Stolzing and, directly and indirectly with him, Hans Sachs have 
been fighting. There is here no monarch, the weight of whose 
personal opinion could have borne down with it the resistance of 
the opponents. Indeed, it is characteristic that in Wagner’s Nu¬ 
remberg, the free imperial city, the emperor’s name should not 
once be mentioned. May we not in this fact see an indication of 
the democratic sentiments that filled Wagner’s soul in the years 
prior to the Revolution of 1848, and that subsequently led to his 
political activity in the interest of this movement as well as to 
his flight from Germany and his long exile ? And is it not worthy 
of recognition that Wagner in the final execution of the Meister- 
singer did not introduce any features that might have detracted 
from the glory of his Nurembergers’ civic pride and love of free¬ 
dom, although his intimate friendship with King Ludwig II. of 
Bavaria might very easily have suggested such to him ? 
A word will have to suffice concerning Wagner’s indebtedness 
to E. T. A. Hoffmann’s narrative Meister Martin der Kiifner und 
seine Gesellen, t to which Miss Bowen assigns the distinction of 
having furnished the chief motive of the plot of the Meister singer, 
viz., that Master Martin’s daughter Rosa is offered as a prize for 
a masterwork (not, it must be noted, for a poetic or musical mas¬ 
terpiece), only on condition that she herself consent (1. c., p. 54): 
“ There can be no doubt that Wagner drew his principal motive 
thus from this very tale.” While Hoffmann’s influence on Wag¬ 
ner must be admitted—Hoffmann’s Kampf der Sanger was one 
of the works that inspired the Tannhduser —the motive in ques¬ 
tion here is so often used in the literature of the first half of the 
last century that it seems indeed presuming to try to locate its 
first appearance precisely. The frequency with which it occurs 
is no doubt sufficiently accounted for by the fact that in the early 
decades of the nineteenth century the paterna potestas disposing 
of a daughter’s hand was already greatly on the wane in Germany. 
The other references to mastersinging in Hoffmann’s tale may 
possibly have kindled the youthful Wagner’s interest in this fea¬ 
ture of the German past, but it is just as likely that in his very 
intensive studies of German antiquities he had become acquainted 
with it. 
There remain three more works that must be mentioned in this 
connection. One of these was unearthed from the archives of 
