Taylor, Edgar [Hrsg.]; Austin, Sarah [Hrsg.]: Lays of the minnesingers or German troubadours of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: Illustr. by specimens of the contemporary lyric poetry of Provence and other parts of Europe ; With histor. and crit. notes, and engravings from the ms. of the minnesingers in the king's library at Paris, and from other sources (London, 1825)

314- MASTERSINGERS.

professors of the University, and were declared to be
the masters and founders of the art.

" The city of Nuremberg was the Athens of these
incorporated poets. To the credit of Hans Foltz,
the barber and Mastersinger, who shaved there in
the middle of the 15th century, it must be told, that
he took great interest in promoting the then newly
discovered art of printing ; and even set up a private
press at his own house. But none of the Master-
singers can vie with the industrious Hans Sachs the
shoemaker. Hans was born at Nuremberg in the
year 1494 ; and his father, an honest tailor, placed
him, at an early age, in the free-school of the town,
where, as he mentions in one of his poems, ' he was
indifferently taught, according to the bad system
which was followed in those days.' However, he
' picked up a few scraps of Greek and Latin.' In
his fifteenth year he learnt shoemaking; and about
the same time, one Nunnenbeck, a weaver and Mas-
tersinger, instructed him in the rudiments of the
' meister gesang.' According to an old German cus-
tom, it was usual for young workmen to travel round
the country for some years before they settled in their
trade. Hans confesses, that his conduct during his
rambles was not altogether exemplary, but he lost no
opportunity of improving himself in the 'praiseworthy
art;' and in his twentieth year he composed his first
'bar,' a godly song, to the tune of 'Long Mamer;'