Hanswurst was a popular coarse-comic figure of German-speaking impromptu comedy. He is "a half doltish half cunning partly stupid partly knowing enterprising and cowardly self indulgent and merry fellow who in accordance with circumstances accentuated one or other of these characteristics."

Through the 16th and 17th centuries, he was a buffoon character in rural carnival theaters and touring companies. The name first appeared in a Middle Low German

Middle Low German

Middle Low German is a language that is the descendant of Old Saxon and is the ancestor of modern Low German. It served as the international lingua franca of the Hanseatic League...

 version of Sebastian Brant

Sebastian Brant

Sebastian Brant was an Alsatian humanist and satirist. He is best known for his satire Das Narrenschiff .-Biography:...

's Ship of Fools

Ship of Fools (satire)

Ship of Fools is a satire published 1494 in Basel, Switzerland by Sebastian Brant, a conservative German theologian....

 (1519) (using the name Hans myst). "Hanswurst" was also a mockery and insult. Martin Luther

Martin Luther

Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...

 used it in his 1541 pamphlet Wider Hans Worst, when he railed against the Catholic Duke Henry of Brunswick

Henry V, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg

Henry , Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, called the Younger, was Prince of Wolfenbüttel from 1514 until his death...

.

In 1712, Joseph Anton Stranitzky developed and popularized the role of Hanswurst. The theater historian Otto Rommel saw this as the beginning of the so-called Viennese popular theater. Stranitzky's Hanswurst wore the garb of a peasant from Salzburg

Salzburg

-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...

, with a wide-brimmed hat on. His humor was often sexual and scatological. The character found numerous imitators.

In the "Hanswurst dispute" of the 1730s, the scholar Johann Christoph Gottsched

Johann Christoph Gottsched

Johann Christoph Gottsched was a German author and critic.-Biography:He was born at Juditten near Königsberg, Brandenburg-Prussia, the son of a Lutheran clergyman...

, in addition to the actress Friederike Caroline Neuber

Friederike Caroline Neuber

Friederike Caroline Neuber, also called Die Neuberin, , was a German actor and theatre director. She is one of the most famous artists in the history of the German theater....

, strove to banish the buffoon from the German-speaking stage, to improve the quality of German comedies and to raise their social status, holding a public "banishing" of Hanswurst. This met with resistance, especially in Vienna. However, the staged banishment has generally been regarded as an emblematic moment in German theater history for the transition from popular, improvised, so-called ‘Stegreiftheater’ to a modern bourgeois literary mode.

The last notable Hanswurst was Franz Schuch, who merged Hanswurst with the stock Harlequin character. The Italian-French Harlequin replaced Hanswurst. In the later 18th Century Hanswurst was out of fashion and was only used in the puppet theater. Comical characters like Punch

Punch and Judy

Punch and Judy is a traditional, popular puppet show featuring the characters of Mr. Punch and his wife, Judy. The performance consists of a sequence of short scenes, each depicting an interaction between two characters, most typically the anarchic Punch and one other character...

 or Staberl replaced him for several decades. At the instigation of Joseph of Sonnenfels after the French Revolution (Memorandum for the future of theater censorship guidelines, 1790) the Emperor Joseph II forbade improvised comedy and burlesque-like buffoon games. Due to authoritarian fear of political agitation, arts were directed towards fixed literary form theater (the "regular theater") and silent, music-accompanied pantomime. 1775, a 26-year-old Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...

 wrote a farce entitled Hanswurst's Wedding. In his 1797 comedy 'Puss in Boots,' ('Der gestiefelte Kater') Ludwig Tieck

Ludwig Tieck

Johann Ludwig Tieck was a German poet, translator, editor, novelist, writer of Novellen, and critic, who was one of the founding fathers of the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.-Early life:...

 brought back the part of Hanswurst. For the Viennese Musical and Theatrical Exhibition of 1892, the actor Ludwig Gottsleben played Hanswurst.

The German film comedy The Comedians

The Comedians (1941 film)

The Comedians is a 1941 German drama film directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst. It is based on the novel Philine by Olly Boeheim.-Plot:Karoline Neuber attempts to improve the lot of actors, who are looked down upon as vagabonds...

 (1941) by GW Pabst, which was marked by the ideology of the war, portrayed Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist, and art critic, and one of the most outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature...

, a German national poet, in a victorious battle against the foul-mouthed Hanswurst. The historical Lessing had written Hanswurst into the Hamburg Dramaturgy, and called the banishment 'the biggest buffoonery of all’ (‘die größte Harlekinade’).