Johann Fischart

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Johann Fischart (c. 1545-1591) was a German satirist and publicist.

[edit] Biography

Fischart was born, probably, at Strasbourg (but according to some accounts at Mainz), in or about the year 1545, and was educated at Worms in the house of Kaspar Scheid, whom in the preface to his Eulenspiegel he mentions as his cousin and preceptor. He appears to have travelled in Italy, the Netherlands, France and England, and on his return to have taken the degree of doctor juris at Basel.

From 1575 to 1581, within which period most of his works were written, he lived with, and was probably associated in the business of, his sister's husband, Bernhard Jobin, a printer at Strasbourg, who published many of his books. In 1581 Fischart was attached, as advocate to the Reichskammergericht (imperial court of appeal) at Speyer, and in 1583, when he married, was appointed Amtmann (magistrate) at Forbach near Saarbrücken. Here he died in the winter of 1590-1591.

Fischart wrote under various feigned names, such as Mentzer, Menzer, Reznem, Huidrich Elloposkleros, Jesuwalt Pickhart, Winhold Alkofribas Wustblutus, Ulrich Mansehr von Treubach, and Im Fischen Gilts Mischen; and it is partly owing to this fact that there is doubt whether some of the works attributed to him are really his. More than 50 satirical works, however, both in prose and verse, remain authentic, among which are Nac/itrab oder Nebelkrdh (1570), a satire against one Jakob Rabe, who had become a convert to the Roman Catholic]][[ Church; Von St. Dominici des Predigermonchs und St Francisci Barfussers artlichem Leben (I 571), a poem with the expressive motto Sie haben Nasen und riechens nit ("Ye have noses and smell it not"), written to defend the Protestants against certain wicked accusations, one of which was that Luther held communion with the devil; Eulenspiegel Reimensweis (written 1571, published 1572); Aller Praktik Grossmutter (1572), after Rabelais' Prognostication Pantagrueline; Floh Haz, Weiber Traz (1573), in which he describes a battle between fleas and women; Affentheuerliche und ungeheuerliche Geschichtschrift yam Leben, Rhaten und Thaten der. . . Helden und Herren Grand gusier Gargantoa und Panta gruel, also after Rabelais (1575, and again under the modified title, Naupengeheurliche Geschichtklilterung, 1577); Neue kunstiiche Figuren biblischer Historian (1576); Anmahnung zur christlichen Kinderzucht (1576); Das gluckhafft Schiff von Zürich (1576, republished 1828, with an introduction by the poet Ludwig Uhland), a poem commemorating the adventure of a company of Zürich arquebusiers, who sailed from their native town to Strasbourg in one day, and brought, as a proof of this feat, a kettleful of Hirscbrei (millet), which had been cooked in Zürich, still warm into Strasbourg, and intended to illustrate the proverb "perseverance overcomes all difficulties"; Podagrammisch Trostbuchlein (1577); Philosophisch Ehzuchtbuchlein (1578); the celebrated Bienenk orb des heiligen romischen Imniensckwarms, &c., a modification of the Dutch De roomsche; Byen-Korf, by Philipp Marnix of St. Aldegonde, published in 1579 and reprinted in 1847; Der heilig Brotkorb (1580), after Calvin's Trait des reliques; Das vierhornige Jesuiterhtlein, a rhymed satire against the Jesuits (1580); and a number of smaller poems.

To Fischart also have been attributed some Psalmen und geistliche Lieder which appeared in a Strasbourg hymn-book of 1576.

Fischart had studied not only ancient literature, but also those of Italy, France, the Netherlands and England. He was a lawyer, a theologian, a satirist and the most powerful Protestant publicist of the counter-reformation period; in politics he was a republican. Above all, he is a master of language, and was indefatigable with his pen. His satire was levelled mercilessly at all perversities in the public and private life of his time, at astrological superstition, scholastic pedantry, ancestral pride, but especially at the papal dignity and the lives of the priesthood and the Jesuits. He indulged in the wildest witticisms, the most abandoned caricature; but all this he did with a serious purpose. As a poet, he is characterized by the eloquence and picturesqueness of his style and the symbolical language he employed. Thirty years after Fischart's death, his writings, once so popular, were almost entirely forgotten. Recalled to the public attention by Johann Jakob Bodmer and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, it was only around the end of the 1800's that his works came to be a subject of investigation, and his position in German literature to be fully understood.

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.