FRAUENLOB, the name by which a German poet of the 13th century is almost exclusively known, though his real name was Heinrich von Meissen. How he acquired the sobriquet has not been decided,—whether it was from his song in honour of the Virgin (Die Heilige Jungfrau), or because in another of his pieces he defended the use of the word Frau instead of Weib f or simply because he sang much in praise of women. The last explanation is the one that has received the stamp of popular acceptance. Frauenlob was born in 1260 of a humble burgher family. His youth was spent in straitened circumstances, but he gradually acquired reputation as a singer at the various courts of the German princes. In 1278 we find him with Rudolph I. in the Marchfeld, in 1286 he was at Prague at the knighting of Wenceslaus II., and in 1311 he was present at a knightly festival celebrated by Waldemar of Brandenburg before Rostock. After this he settled in Mainz, and there, according to the popular account, founded the first school of Meister-singers. He died in 1318, and was buried in the cloisters of the cathedral at Mainz. His grave is still marked by (a copy made in 1783 of the original tombstone of 1318; and in 1842 a monument by Schwanthaler was erected by the ladies of the city in another part of the cloisters. Frauenlob’s poems make a great display of learning, and their versification abounds in tricks of rhyme. Ettmüller published a very full edition in 1843.

See Von der Hagen’s Minnesingerlvoì. iv.; Bartsch, Meisterlieder der Kolmar er Handschrift ; and Schröer i in Bartsch’s Germanist. Studien. An English translation of Frauenlob’s Cantica Canticorum by A. E. Kroeger appeared in 1877 at St Louis, United States.