WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH. – German poet, born probably in present-day Wolfram-Eschenbach near Ansbach in Bavaria (the year of his birth is not documented) to a family of the Bavarian lesser nobility, died ca. 1218.
He lived chiefly as a wandering knight and singer at the courts of German princes (he was also at the famous Wartburg Castle of Landgrave Hermann I of Thuringia [1190–1216], where, at the time of the contest among the master singers, he met Walther von der Vogelweide). Together with Hartmann von Aue and Gottfried von Strassburg, W. represents the classical period of Middle High German epic poetry. Yet, unlike Hartmann and Gottfried, who incline toward an art that is exclusively courtly and secular, W. knows how to fuse the worldly element with the religious, heroic poetry with courtly poetry, the type of the chivalric and adventurous romance with the familial type, and the movement of art poetry with that of popular poetry; from this arises the singularity of his style. His masterpiece is the Parzifal, in 16 books, probably composed in the first decade of the 13th century: its source is Li conte del Graal o Perceval li Gallois (ca. 1170) by Chrétien de Troyes, while the book of Kyot, to which the poet frequently alludes (l. VIII, vv. 560 ff., 992; X, V. 605, etc.), is merely a fiction intended to justify to the public, in accordance with traditional practice, the episodes and digressions freely created by him.
W. is not, in fact, an imitator but one of the most original poets, who not only deepens and ennobles the original’s tale in pursuit of a superior chivalric ideal, but, transforming the Grail into a touchstone of moral nobility—or, better, into a symbol of the Savior—follows Parzifal’s human and spiritual journey from the darkness of guilt through all the stages of elevation and purification that will ultimately make him worthy of becoming king of the Grail. W. also composed two other poems, Titurel and Willehalm di Orania, which nevertheless remained fragmentary (the latter was perhaps interrupted by the poet’s death); finally, he also left us seven lyrics of considerable importance.