Wolfram von Eschenbach:

"...Wolfram composed his Parzival, a chivalric romance of 24,810 lines in rhymed couplets, which may stand as the noblest literary achievement of the Middle Ages, with the sole exception of Dante's Divine Comedy."            

 

(Parzival,  Mustard and Passage, Vintage Books, 1961, p.xi)

 

The Encyclopædia Britannica Online sums up what's usually said about the poet:

 

Wolfram von Eschenbach:

born c. 1170
died c. 1220

German poet whose epic Parzival, distinguished alike by its moral elevation and its imaginative power, is one of the most profound literary works of the Middle Ages. An impoverished Bavarian knight, Wolfram apparently served a succession of Franconian lords: Abensberg, Wildenberg, and Wertheim are among the places he names in his work. He also knew the court of the landgrave Hermann I of Thuringia, where he met the great medieval lyric poet Walther von der Vogelweide. Though a self-styled illiterate, Wolfram shows an extensive acquaintance with French and German literature, and it is probable that he knew how to read, if not how to write.

Wolfram's surviving literary works, all bearing the stamp of his unusually original personality, consist of eight lyric poems, chiefly Tagelieder (“Dawn Songs,” describing the parting of lovers at morning); the epic Parzival; the unfinished epic Willehalm, telling the history of the crusader Guillaume d'Orange; and short fragments of a further epic, the so-called Titurel, which elaborates the tragic love story of Sigune from book 3 of Parzival.

 

Parzival, probably written between 1200 and 1210, is a poem of 25,000 lines in 16 books. Likely based on an unfinished romance of Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval, ou Le Conte du Graal, it introduced the theme of the Holy Grail into German literature. Its beginning and end are new material, probably of Wolfram's own invention, although he attributes it to an unidentified and probably fictitious Provençal poet, Guiot. The story of the ignorant and naive Parzival, who sets out on his adventures without even knowing his own name, employs the classic fairy-tale motif of “the guileless fool” who, through innocence and artlessness, reaches a goal denied to wiser men.

Wolfram uses Parzival's dramatic progress from folk-tale dunce to wise and responsible keeper of the Grail to present a subtle allegory of man's spiritual education and development. Parzival also figures as the hero of Richard Wagner's last opera, Parsifal (1882). The complexity of Wolfram's theme is matched by his eccentric style, which is characterized by rhetorical flourishes, ambiguous syntax, and the free use of dialect.

 

Wolfram's influence on later poets was profound, and he is a member, with Hartmann von Aue and Gottfried von Strassburg, of the great triumvirate of Middle High German epic poets.

Additional information:

              Everything we know about him is from the few comments about himself, and a couple of brief remarks by other poets. Bötticher (1) is a German scholar who tried to find out more in the 1880's. He travelled to the region of Eschenbach and discovered two sources that seem to be ignored today:

Near Wildenberg are three Eschenbachs, Oberr-, Mittel-  and Unter-Eschenbach.  The knight, Püterich von Reichertzhausen, who was very interested in German literature started a library, and wrote (Ehrenbrief) in 1462 that he rode 20 miles to look for Wolfram’s grave, until he found it in “Unser Frauen Münster”( i.e. a church) in Eschenbach dem Martkt.  A patrician from Nuremberg, named Kress, saw it on August 5, 1608, in Ober-Eschenbach, in the Deutschherrenkirche (i.e. probably the same church). Wolfram’s gravestone bore the inscription:

Hier liegt der streng Ritter

Herr Wolfram von Eschenbach

Ein Meister Sänger

            Bötticher agrees with his peers of the 19th century, that Wolfram was: 1. A knight, because he said of himself "the service of the shield is my profession" (P.115,11 Lachmann). 2. He was in the service of the Counts of Wertheim. 3. He leased a small property in Wildenberg, which could hardly sustain him, because he said "not even the mice have enough to eat" (IV, 104 ff.;V,518).  

            Bötticher points out that the name "von Eschenbach" would merely mean that he was in the service of the Eschenbachs, which is no indication that he was of nobility. There are records of some Eschenbachs between 1250 and 1350, but neither their nobility nor relation to Wolfram is suggested anywhere. And, what's worse, Eschenbach was donated to the German Order in 1250 -- by no other than the above Counts of Wertheim. The author also quotes a contemporary of Wolfram, the poet Wirnt von Grafenberg, who refers to him as "Wolfram, the wise man of Eschenbach", which he labels an improper reference to an aristocrat (2). One problem no one dares to touch is the fact that Wolfram called himself a Bavarian from Eschenbach, although this town was Frankish, not Bavarian!  It is part of Bavaria today, but that change occurred centuries after Wolfram.

            Again, we need to question everything and start from "scratch" like Perceval, whom we meet here as the equally stupid Parzival.  Our next adventure will make scholars cry, like young Parzival after he had shot the birds, and pull their hair out like him, if they have some left. We are really going where no one has gone before! Why do you think Mustard and Passage, see above, pointed out the work has 24,810 lines?  That's because there is a hidden code, beginning with the St. Gallen manuscript, from which Lachmann worked, where each page has two columns of 54 lines, adding up to 108. These are familiar numbers when we tackle Plato, and Hesiod's famous riddle with Plutarch to calculate the lifespan of the Phoenix. This mythological bird of Antiquity gets its powers of regeneration from the grail, according to Wolfram. These numbers return in a riddle about the "Christmas Star" by Michael Scot, but that's not all: The German-American professor Otto Springer made a discovery that could change anything ever said about Wolfram. There is a hidden code in the work, where decisive events are identified after 108 units of 30 lines. According to Springer: 

The first section of exactly 108 units (30 lines each) is the added story of Parzival's parents. This is followed by 3 sections of 108 units (109-432) until book IX, the core of the work, which only has 70 units of 30 lines.  Then there are again 3 sections of 108 units (503-827), until the poem ends after unit 827.

            This discovery raises a lot of questions, and disproves that he was a "self-styled illiterate", as the Britannica claims. Wolfram says that his adventure is not from books and he doesn't (need to) know a letter of the alphabet. Does he imply that it is not invented, but a true story? A Schlüsselroman perhaps? And what if Wolfram was no knight at all, but servant of another shield, the hexagram?  Does this mean that he was Jewish, like Chrétien may have been? Or such a poor Pythagorean beggar monk that not even the mice had enough to eat? 

This is the only picture we have of him. Is he the little monk who holds the reins of the horse in the popular Mannessier illustration, next to a knight that looks like Mickey Mouse? Or was Gottfried right when he refused to call Wolfram by name and referred to him as "the hare's companion in the field of words?" This could make sense because the knight's ears make him also look like a hare! In that case, MEISTER KYOT was not Guiot, but MICHAEL SCOT, who was known to be "slender in the flanks" like a hare.  But don't let the mirror image of the two names fool you -- these may be blind men's dreams! Yes, you have to be really sharp now, and digest a lot of weird dishes from the grail: Old food and new food, hot and cold, of tame animals and of game.  That's what master Wolfram said, and he was probably right.

Check riddles for more, if you haven't done so yet.

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1. Parzival von Wolfram von Eschenbach, Dr. Gotthold Bötticher, Verlag von Friedberg & Mode, Berlin, 1885, p.XVI-II

2. op. cit. pp. XVIII-XIX  "Endlich ist auch die Art, wie Wolframs Landsmann und Zeitgenosse, der Dichter Wirnt von Grafenberg, ihn nennt, nicht ohne Belang. Er nennt ihn "Wolfram, den wisen man von Eschenbach"; so hätte er einen adeligen Herrn schwerlich bezeichnet."