The minnesingers were the German equivalent of the troubadours and trouvères of medieval France. Like them, and unlike the minstrels and jongleurs, many of them came from the ranks of the nobility.
Minnesingers began a little later than their French counterparts, who flourished between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. The class seems to have arisen in Germany as a result of contact with wandering troubadours and trouvères. These brought with them the concept of amour courtois or courtly love. This married with German folk influences in the art of the minnesinger. The word minnesinger itself derives from the German word minne, which means love.
After the decline of the courtly minnesingers, their art was taken up by the trader and craftsman classes. This gave rise to guilds of Mastersingers in almost every German city. These flourished until the seventeenth century and continued well into the eighteen hundreds. The death of the last member of a guild of mastersingers was as late as 1876.
Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger von N├╝rnberg deals with the activity of such a guild. Its leading character, Hans Sachs, is based on a real mastersinger of the thirteenth century.
