Hanswurst

Hanswurst or Hans Wurst (German for "Johnny Sausage") was a popular coarse-comic stock character of German-speaking impromptu comedy.

Martin Luther used it in his 1541 pamphlet Wider Hans Worst (Against Hanswurst),[2] when he railed against the Catholic Duke Henry of Brunswick.

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.

In his 1797 comedy Puss in Boots (Der gestiefelte Kater), Ludwig Tieck brought back the part of Hanswurst.

The historical Lessing had written Hanswurst into the Hamburg Dramaturgy, and called the banishment "the biggest buffoonery of all" (die größte Harlekinade).