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Page 57
After the death of Konrad IV, the last Swabian emperor of the
House of Hohenstaufen, minnesinging in Germany declined, and
was succeeded by the movement represented by the _meister_ or
mastersingers. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
when Germany was broken up into countless small duchies and
kingdoms, many of the German nobles became mere robbers and took
part in the innumerable little wars which kept the nation in
a state of ferment. Thus they had neither time nor inclination
to occupy themselves with such pursuits as poetry or music. In
the meanwhile, however, the incessant warfare and brigandage
that prevailed in the country tended to drive the population
to the cities for protection. The latter grew in size, and
little by little the tradespeople began to take up the arts
of poetry and music which had been discarded by the nobles.
Following their custom in respect to their trades, they formed
the art companies into guilds, the rules for admittance to which
were very strict. The rank of each member was determined by
his skill in applying the rules of the "Tabulatur," as it was
called. There were five grades of membership: the lowest was
that of mere admittance to the guild; the next carried with
it the title of scholar; the third the friend of the school;
after that came the singer, the poet; and last of all the
mastersinger, to attain which distinction the aspirant must
have invented a new style of melody or rhyme. The details of
the contest we all know from Wagner's comedy; in a number of
cases Wagner even made use of the sentences and words found
in the rules of the mastersingers. Although the mastersingers
retained their guild privileges in different parts of Germany
almost up to the middle of the present century, the movement
was strongest in Bavaria, with Nuremberg as its centre.
Thus we see that the mastersingers and the minnesingers were
two very different classes of men. The mastersingers are
mainly valuable for having given Wagner a pretext for his
wonderful music. Hans Sachs was perhaps the only one of the
mastersingers whose melodies show anything but the flattest
mediocrity. The minnesingers and their immediate predecessors
and successors, on the other hand, furnished thought for a great
part of our modern art. To put it in a broad manner, it may be
said that much of our modern poetry owes more than is generally
conceded to the German mediaeval romance as represented in the
works of Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried of Strasburg, and
the unknown compilers of the "Nibelungenlied" and "Gutrune."
Music owes more to the troubadours, for, from what we know
of the melodies of the minnesingers, they cannot compare in
expressiveness with those of their French _confr�res_.
In closing this consideration of the minnesingers, I will quote
some of their verses and melodies, giving short accounts of
the authors.
The best known of the minnesingers were Walther von der
Vogelweide, Heinrich Frauenlob, Tannh�user, Nithart, Toggenburg,
etc. We first hear of Walther von der Vogelweide in 1200,
as a poet attached to the court of Philip of Hohenstaufen,
the German Kaiser, and shortly after to that of his successors
Otto and Friedrich. He accompanied Kaiser Friedrich to the
Crusade of 1228, and saw him crowned in Jerusalem. He died
in W�rzburg, Bavaria. In accordance with his dying request,
food and drink for the birds were placed on his tomb every day;
the four holes carved for that purpose being still visible. The
pictures in Hagen's work on the mastersingers were collected in
the fifteenth century by Manasses of Zorich, and have served
as the basis for all subsequent works on the subject. The
picture of Von der Vogelweide (page 21) shows him sitting in
an attitude of meditation, on a green hillock, beside him his
sword and his coat of arms (a caged bird on one side and his
helmet on the other), and in his hand a roll of manuscript.
One of his shorter poems begins:
Neath the lindens
In the meadow
Seek I flowers sweet;
Clover fragrant,
Tender grasses,
Bend beneath my feet.
See, the gloaming,
Softly sinking,
Covers hill and dale.
Hush! my lover--
Tandaradei!
Sweet sings the nightingale.
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