Excerpt from The Master-Singers of Nuremberg (Die Meistersinger Von Nurnberg): A Dramatic Poem The real Master-singers were interesting. These artisan-poets of Germany were some what different from the Minnesingers, who were more akin to the troubadours of France. The Master-singers were in a certain sense the outcome of the Minnesingers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Minnesingers were mostly of noble birth, and lived in kings' courts or wandered from castle to castle in 'the age of chivalry and the Crusades. Heinrich von Meissen, surnamed Frauenlobe, was a Min nesinger who was generally regarded as the founder of the schools and guilds of the Mas ter-singers. The Master-singers belonged to the burgher and artisan class. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.