Wolfram von Eschenbach

Wolfram von Eschenbach was a German poet of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, regarded as the greatest narrative poet of medieval Germany. Almost everything known about him comes from his own works. He probably came from Eschenbach near Ansbach in Franconia, now called Wolframs-Eschenbach, and he describes himself as a knight of modest means who served noble patrons, among them Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia, at whose court he may have met other poets. He famously claimed that he could not read, though scholars doubt this. His masterpiece, Parzival, written around 1200 to 1210 in sixteen books, adapts Chrétien de Troyes's unfinished Perceval and tells of a young knight's growth from foolish ignorance to wisdom and compassion as king of the Grail. He also wrote the unfinished epic Willehalm, about wars between Christians and Saracens, which treats the enemy with notable sympathy; fragments of a poem called Titurel; and several lyric dawn songs. He died around 1220. Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal was based on his poem.

Wolfram von Eschenbach is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: A medieval Christian poet whose Parzival turns on the conflict of faith and doubt; a 13th-century poem cast him as the champion of Christianity, and he was buried in the church at Ober-Eschenbach. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)