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 Nürnbcrg. During his life, Menth adopted the costume of Sachs and knew by heart the songs and verses of...
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