Minnesingers
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Minnesingers. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a name given to the early lyric German poets, especially of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The name is derived from minne, meaning love. This was the predominant subject of their songs. They correspond in a way to the troubadours of France, the gleemen of the Anglo-Saxons, the minstrels of the Normans, and the bards of Britain. Frederick Barbarossa, emperor of Germany, encouraged the minnesingers. They composed songs in praise of women and odes for occasions of public joy or distress, as well as ballads of love. The composer sang his own songs to the accompaniment of the viol. The composition of the minnesingers is supposed popularly to have been graceful and agreeable to the ear. Their native home was upper Austria. They wandered from castle to castle, even beyond the boundaries of Germany, singing their productions. The student of literature regrets that, with the invention of printing, the minne songs were not regarded worthy of preservation. Hymns, monkish legends, and paraphrases of the Scriptures completely suppressed the songs of the chivalrous minnesingers. The few songs preserved are considered a noble beginning of German literature . They compare favorably with the ballads of Great Britain . The minnesingers whose names the intelligent reader is most apt to meet are Walther von der Weide, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried von Strassburg, and Hartmann von der Aue. Longfellow in his poem, Walther von der Vogelweid, relates a story of this poet to the effect that, at his death, he left his treasures to be used in feeding the birds daily on and about his grave. Saying, "From these wandering minstrels I have learned the art of song: Let me now repay the lessons They have taught so well and long." See Meistersingers
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a class of German lyric poets of the 12th and 13th cen. turies, so called from love being the chief theme of their verse. They consisted almost exclusively of men of aristocratic birth, the most prominent names being Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried von Strassburg, Hartmann von der Aue, and Walther von der Vogelweide. They sang their lyrics to the accompaniment of the viol, generally in honor of the high-born dames. The songs, chiefly in the Swabian dialect, were seldom written down by their authors, and the manuscripts which contain their verse are mostly the result of oral traditions and repetitions. This remarkable poetical movement gradually merged into that other class of German lyric poets called MEISTERSINGERS (q. v.).
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 lament that "with the invention of printing, the minne songs were not regarded worthy of preservation" was already out of date when it was printed: the great Codex Manesse, compiled in Zurich around 1300-1340, holds some 6,000 stanzas by about 140 named poets, with 137 famous full-page portrait miniatures, and it had been back in Heidelberg since 1888; it is now freely readable page by page online. Two other points have shifted. The earliest Minnesang is now traced not to "upper Austria" but to the Danube region generally, in poets such as Der von Kurenberg, before Provencal troubadour models reshaped the form; and Collier's claim of 1921 that the singers were "almost exclusively men of aristocratic birth" no longer holds for figures like Walther von der Vogelweide, read today as a landless professional dependent on patrons. Aiton's "Walther von der Weide" is simply a slip for Vogelweide, whose songs, along with Neidhart's, are now regularly performed by early-music ensembles, though only a small fraction of the melodies survive.
Written for this edition, 2026.