The mastersingers followed in the wake of the declining minnesingers. Drawn entirely from the burgher or artisan classes and organizing themselves into guilds after the manner of the contemporary trades-union, they strove to imitate the methods of their aristocratic forerunners, without, however, sharing their artistic and lyric endowments. At a time when their social and economic superiors were entirely engrossed in the political and religious turmoils of the times, they succeeded in keeping alive a real love for music in the hearts of the common people and in preserving a wholesome reverence for the dignity and worth of the art. Aside from this important function, they did nothing directly to advance the art of music. In _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg_ Wagner gives an historically accurate picture of their hopelessly pedantic methods and reactionary spirit, which were indeed far removed from the nature of real folk-music. The vast bulk of their melodies were weak imitations of church chants or popular folk-songs. At long intervals a mastersinger such as Hans Sachs, the quaint and lovable cobbler of Nuremberg (1494-1576), would manifest a spark of real lyric genius. The first guild is supposed to have been established at Mayence on the Rhine in 1311 by Heinrich von Meissen, called Frauenlob, himself a distinguished minnesinger, the last of that order. The guilds multiplied and were especially active from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. After 1600 the movement lost its significance and the guilds dropped by the wayside one by one, though a few lingered on until the nineteenth century, the last one having been disbanded at Ulm in 1839.