MINNESINGERS, a designation applied to the earliest lyric poets of Germany in the 12th and 13th centuries, and derived from the word minne, or love, which was at first the predominating, and almost sole subject treated of in their productions. The works of the minnesingers are for the most part superior to those of their more generally known contemporaries, the troubadours, both in regard to delicacy of sentiment, elegance and variety- of rhythmical structure, and gitice'saf dletion.1 Henry of Veldig, who flourished in the beginning of the 12th c. at the court of the Swabian, Frederick Barbarossa, emperor of Germany, is regarded as the father of the minnesingers, and Walther von der Weide, who was born about 1170, as the last of this great vocal band, which included emperors, princes, nobles, and knights. Many of their productions have of course per ished, although, in addition to a very large collection of poems by anonymous minnesin gers, we still possess some remains of the songs of more than 150 known composers. Among the most celebrated of these, special notice is due to Wolfram von Eschenhach (q.v.), Henry von Ofterdingen, Hagenaue, Hartmann von der Aue (q.v.), Gottfried von Strasburg (q.v.), Otto von Botenlauben, Truchsess von St. Gall, and Ulrich von Lichten stein—men of noble houses, who, although they belonged to every part of Germany-, wrote almost exclusively in the Swabian dialect, which, during the brilliant days of the Fred. ericks and Conrads of the house of Swabia, was the language of the court in Germany. Among the few other forms of German employed by the minnesingers, the one next in favor was the Thuringian, adopted in compliment to Hermann, landgraf of Thuringia, who, next to the princes of the Swabian dynasty, was the most munificent patron of the minnesingers during the period of their renown, in the early part of the 13th century. Besides songs in' firaise wmnen, the miunesingers -composed odes on public or private occasions of lament or joy, distiches or axioms, and waehtlieder, or watch-songs, in which the lover was represented as expostulating With the watchman, who kept guard at the gate of the castle within which his lady-love was imprisoned and trying to persuade him to grant him admittance to her presence. These songs and odes were recited by the com poser, to his own accompaniment on the viol; and as few of the minnesingers could write, their compositions were preserved mostly by verbal tradition only, and carried by wandering minstrels from castle to castle throughout Germany, and even beyond its bor ders. As the variety of rhythm and complicated forms of versification affected by the minnesingers, more especially towards the decline of their art, rendered it difficult to retain by memory the mass of minnesong which had been gradually accumulated, these itinerant musicians finally made use of written collections, a practice to which alone we are indebted for the many beautiful specimens of early German lyrical poetry which we yet possess. The glory of the minnesingers may be said to have perished with the down
fall of the Swabian dynasty, under which greater liberty of thought and word was allowed among Germans than they again enjoyed for many ages; and in proportion as the church succeeded in reasserting its sway over the minds of men, which it had lost under the rule of the chivalric Fredericks, freedom of speech and action was trammeled, and song and poetry contemned. Paraphrases of Scripture, hymns, and monkish legends, took the place of the chivalric song,s of the nobly born minnesingers, and Ger man poetry was for a time almost annihilated.
In the 14th c., the art of minnesong was partially revived, although under a rude and clumsily elaborated form, by the master-singers, a body of men belonging to the burgher and peasant classes, who, in accordance with their artisan habits, formed themselves into guilds or companies, which bound themselves to observe certain arbitrary laws of rhythm. Nuremberg was the focus of their guilds, which rapidly spread over the whole of Germany, and gained so firm a footing in the land, that the last of them was not dis solved at Ulm till 1839. As the title of master was only awarded to a member who invented a new form of verse, and the companies consisted almost exclusively of unedu cated persons of the working-classes, it may easily be conceived that extravagances and absurdities of every kind speedily formed a leading characteristic of their modes of ver sification; attention to quantity was, moreover, not deemed necessary, regard being had merely to the number of the syllables, and the relative position and order of the verses and rhymes. Their songs were lyrical, and sung to music; and although, as before remarked, each master was bound to devise a special stole or order of rhymes for each of his compositions, these stoles were subjected to a severe code of criticism, enacted by the tabulatur, or rules of the song-schools. Among the few masters who exhibited any gen uine poetic feeling, the most noted were Heinrich Milgeln, Michael Behaim, and the Nuremberg shoemaker, Hans Sachs, who prided himself on having composed 4,275 bar or master songs. See Tieck's Afinnelieder (1803); Taylor's Lays of the Afinne and Master Singers (Lond. 1825); and Von der Hagen's Ifinnestinger (4 vols. 1888).