105 
Eoedder—“Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.” 
In its guarded form this statement is more of an hypothesis 
than of a thesis. There might be something in it provided that 
it can be shown that Wagner knew Raimund’s play before he pen¬ 
ned the Marienbad sketch. For all the features mentioned occur 
also, as we have seen, in Lortzing’s opera. 
What if Wagner had consciously utilized the work of his pre¬ 
decessors? I hope to have shown that he did not. But if Mo- 
liere, charged with literary piracy, had really said, “Je prends 
mon bien oil je le trouve” —a repartee invented by one of his de¬ 
tractors—he would have done so with a perfect right. In all 
art it matters little what materials the artist uses, or where he 
gets them. It does matter what he makes of them. And Die 
Meistersinger von Numb erg is one of the few truly great come¬ 
dies of all literature. 
With this assertion we are not paying Wagner’s work tribute 
above its meed. The year 1918 witnessed the semi-centenial of 
its first performance. Half a century is time enough for both 
fulsome panegyrics and unfair personal criticism against the 
poet’s individuality to give way to soberminded judgment, and 
half a century has rendered its verdict. 
No other work of Wagner’s is so narrowly circumscribed as re¬ 
gards time and place, and yet scarcely another is more universal 
in its human appeal. “As a picture of medieval life,” says 
Finck, 1. c., page 224, “it is as realistic, accurate, and delightful 
as the best of Scott’s novels.” It is a wonderfully correct por¬ 
trait of sixteenth century life in the free imperial city of Nurem¬ 
berg in its most flourishing state, with its industrious citizens, its 
proud trade and craft guilds, its pedantic but worthy and honor¬ 
able mastersingers, and the towering figure of its Hans Sachs. In 
this respect it is the most distinctly German work of the com¬ 
poser, and it is noteworthy that he wrote the text during his stay 
in Paris in 1861-62. In Wollen wir Jioffenf (1879; Gesammelte 
Werke, x, 119 f.) he says: 
“In my execution and presentation of the Meistersinger, which 
at first I hoped to bring out in Nuremberg itself, I was guided 
by the intention of offering to the German public a picture of its 
own true nature which heretofore had been presented to it only 
very unsatisfactorily, and I, cherished the fond hope of winning 
serious recognition from the heart of the nobler and superior ele¬ 
ments of the German middle classes. An excellent performance 
in the Munich Royal Court Opera House met with the warmest 
