A period of almost complete anarchy followed.

Dogmatism and lack of patriotic sentiment, those bad characteristics of the German people, contributed to extend this destruction to the economic sphere.

The intellectual life of the German people deteriorated equally.

At the time when the Imperial power was budding and under the rule of the highly-gifted Staufers, German poetry was passing through a first classical period.

Every German country was ringing with song; the depth of German sentiment found universal expression in ballads and poems, grave or gay, and German idealism inspired the minnesingers.