Wolfram von Eschenbach

Wolfram von Eschenbach was a Bavarian knight and poet who wrote in Middle High German in the early thirteenth century, and is generally ranked with Gottfried von Strassburg and Hartmann von Aue as one of the three great court epic poets of his age. Little is known of his life beyond what he says of himself in his poems: that he was a knight, that he could not read well, and that he worked at the courts of Hermann of Thuringia and others.

His Parzival, completed around 1210 and based on Chrétien de Troyes's Perceval, tells of the education and failures of a young knight who becomes king of the Grail. He also left the unfinished epics Titurel and Willehalm and a handful of dawn-songs. Parzival later provided the ground for Wagner's Parsifal.