We have mentioned both Meistersingers and Minnesingers. It may perhaps not be superfluous to add a word or two on the difference between these. The Minnesingers flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They were mostly of noble birth, and, in an age when poetry and chivalry kissed each other, they exclusively cultivated the poetic art, living in kings' palaces, or wandering from court to court, and composing and singing pure and beautiful little love poems, in which the meadows and flowers sparkle, as it were, in the sunlight of their song. Best known of these minstrels is Walter von der Vogelweide. He, during his wanderings, visited and sang in this old town at the Court of Frederick II., himself a Minnesinger. Heinrich von Meissen, surnamed Frauenlob, also visited Nuremberg, but he was the last of the Minnesingers, and was buried at Mainz, 1318. After his time the practice of German poetry devolved almost exclusively on the burgher and artisan class. Close societies were formed: the rules of poetry and singing were taught in their schools. Versecraft became one of the Incorporated Trades. The Sängerzünfte, or Singers' Guilds, flourished chiefly at Augsburg, and on the Rhine at Strasburg, Mainz, and Worms. The Meistersingers, ever anxious, but all unable to clothe themselves with the fallen mantle of ancient glory, speak of the "Twelve old Masters" (including Tannhäuser, Walter von der Vogelweide, Wolfran, etc.), as having lived together and formed the first society of Meistersingers, under Otto I. The truth is that these Twelve Masters were Minnesingers, and did not live together. Longfellow's phrase, "Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters," cannot, therefore, be correctly applied to Hans Sachs. The Incorporated Poets, we must confess, though they derived many of their rules and metres from the Minnesingers, managed to degrade the old German Minnesinging to a close, artificial, and philistine art. The final pitch of absurdity was reached, when in 1646 was published Harsdörfer's "Nuremberg Funnel, for pouring in the art of German poetry and rhyme, without the aid of the Latin tongue, in six lessons." Succeeding ages have thanked Harsdörfer for that phrase. "Nürnberger Trichter" has passed into a proverb. The first celebrated master-singer of Nuremberg was Hans Folz (1470), whom Hans Sachs called a "durchleutig deutschen Poeten" (noble German poet). It is to be noted that the poems of the Meistersingers were always sung to music, and often had to be written to a particular tune. Hence the stringent rules made for their formation: hence, too, when prizes were given for the fewest mistakes in mere technique, the great attention paid to form and metre, and the gradual elimination of true passion and poetry. Nuremberg had always fostered music. The art of lute-making, as of organ-building, had found a home there. Borkhardt, the famous inventor of musical instruments, built the St. Sebald's organ about this time.