WOLFRAM von ESCHENBACH. - German poet, probably born in what is now Wolfram-Eschenbach near Ansbach in Bavaria (his birth year is undocumented), from a family of minor Bavarian nobility; he died c. 1218.
He lived mostly as a wandering knight and minstrel at the courts of German princes (he was also at the famous Wartburg castle of the Landgrave Hermann I of Thuringia [1190–1216], where, at the time of the Mastersingers’ contest, he met Walther von der Vogelweide). Alongside Hartmann von Aue and Gottfried von Strassburg, W. represents the classical period of Middle High German epic poetry. Yet, unlike Hartmann and Gottfried, who lean toward an art that is purely courtly and secular, W. succeeds in blending the earthly with the religious, the heroic with the courtly, the chivalric and adventurous romance with the familial, and the refined poetic style with the popular, all in the Italianate idiom of his own.
His masterpiece is *Parzifal*, in 16 books, composed probably in the first decade of the 13th century. Its source is *Li conte del Graal* or *Percerval li Gallois* (c. 1170) by Chrétien de Troyes, while the book by Kyot, to which the poet often alludes (I. VIII, ll. 560 f., 992; X, l. 605, etc.), is merely a fiction meant to justify, in keeping with tradition, the freely invented episodes and digressions.
W. is no mere imitator but one of the most original poets. Not only does he deepen and ennoble the tale of the original in the pursuit of a loftier chivalric ideal, but by transforming the *Graal* into a touchstone of moral nobility—or rather, into a symbol of the Saviour—he traces Parzifal’s human and spiritual journey from the darkness of sin through every stage of elevation and purification, until at last he becomes worthy to be king of the Grail. W. also composed two other poems, *Titurel* and *Wilhelmin von Oringen*, both left fragmentary (the latter perhaps interrupted by the poet’s death); and he left us seven lyrics of considerable importance.