The German mind has not been strikingly original or racial in folk-dances. It has taken more an abstract and purely musical direction and paid little attention to the dance. If we leave out the dances of the Bavarians, Saxons and Tyroleans, there is little that is of any ethnographic interest in this respect. The Prussian _Fackeltanz_ belongs more to the elaborate pantomimes of the order of ancient Rome, rather than to regular dances. The mediæval Germany that was ruled politically and ecclesiastically from Rome never felt the influence of the rural country people, but, on the contrary, was mostly under the æsthetic and intellectual influence of the feudal barons and urban middle class. Under the influence of these two classes, German music, poetry, drama and literature came into existence. The German classic art is predominantly aristocratic and ecclesiastic. The early German artists were constrained to gather in the aristocratic salons of the rich patricians. The peasant was rarely a model of early German artists, but a German _Freiherr_, _Bürger_ or _Handwerker_ has been the subject of many German dramas, operas and musical compositions, and of much painting, sculpture and dancing. Wilhelm Angerstein tells us in his interesting book _Volkstänze in deutschen Mittelalter_ that already in 1300 there existed German guild dances--_Zunfttänze_--such as the _Messertanz_ (‘knife dance’) in Nürnberg, _Schafftertanz_ (‘cooper’s dance’) in Munich, etc. Besides these there were the aristocratic _Schreittänze_ and _Schleiftänze_. The _Drehtanz_, out of which originated the later _Walzer_, was an aristocratic and patrician, but never a truly rural folk-dance.