Meistersängern.

1827 Monthly Rev. Jan. 51 The Meistersänger, in their music schools, laboured for the perfection of German poetry, and..placed the very summit of the art in a formal scholastic regularity of rhythms.

1854 A. G. Henderson tr. V. Cousin Philos. Kant i. 5 The poetry of this period is to be found in the songs of the Minnesängers and the Meistersängers.

1896 Mod. Lang. Notes 11 88/2 By gradual stages the palm that had been held by genius passed into the hands of the ‘Meistersänger’, those prosaic burgher-singers of the thirteenth and the succeeding centuries.

1933 Jrnl. Mod. Hist. 5 189 Minnesinger, Meistersänger, the Hansa, the Teutonic Knights, the unity of the medieval empire, and other phases of medieval history were used to illustrate German greatness, German sincerity, German honesty and fidelity.

1950 Speculum 25 15 Before the time of Charles..kings and the nobility had had German clergy, officials, and Meistersänger at their courts.

1971 Renaissance Q. 24 493 Throughout the sixteenth century..single Meistersänger selections and excerpts from hymnals proved popular in broadsides.

2006 C. Woodford in P. Hutchinson Landmarks German Comedy 33 Vernacular drama was often written by the Meistersänger, master craftsmen, who, until the beginning of the seventeenth century, composed short carnival plays, which were performed in inns to a mostly male audience.