Hans Sachs II

At Kritzendorf, small Austrian hamlet, there shuffled off this mortal coil one of the most picturesque characters of an age that is past. Death came to 84-year-old Peter Menth, famed in Vienna and throughout the German Empire as the world's best maker of boots.

He was buried in the local cemetery (Baron von Auffenberg-Kornarow, onetime Austrian Minister of War, delivered a funeral oration) in the costume of Hans Sachs, the famed medieval poet-bootmaker whom Wagner immortalized in his Die Meistersinger von Nuernbcrg. During his life, Menth adopted the costume of Sachs and knew by heart the songs and verses of the latter's collected works (20 volumes).