“ Platonic love had ousted the older and far more genuine sentiment between men and women. We shall find that the minnesingers were merely doing what had been done a little sooner by the troubadours, but the minnesong was not so brilliant, though it was almost as artificial as the poems written in the best period (1100-1260) of Provençal literature (q.v.) . The Germans cultivated such forms as were popular in Southern France, as the love-poem proper, the sirventes (q.v.) ”

“ In him we find both courtly and popular elements. Walther also modeled poems after romantic patterns. Austria was the centre of court poetry. There Reinmar had lived and there Walther had learned his art. Neidhart had first composed for peasants songs and dances, but his ambitious tendencies displeased them and he turned to the Court. With Walther and Neidhart the road goes in twain, and each had his followers. Princes had been among the troubadours. ”

“ Some of the most ancient German poems are put into woman's mouth, but we can scarcely conclude that women were therefore among the minnesingers, though several ladies, as for instance, the Countess of Dia, wrote love poems in Provençal. ”