Superior to all other poets of the German High Middle Ages as a versifier, Gottfried also outshines them in his knowledge of the human psyche and can be said to constitute one of the twin peaks of this period in German literature—the other being Wolfram von Eschenbach, who takes not individuals but the whole of German society, if not the whole world, as his subject.
As is the case with so many other poets of this time, and despite the evident popularity of his work, there is no documentary evidence about Gottfried's life. One must, therefore, seek biographical data in his literary works and in those of his contemporaries and successors. Gottfried is almost always referred to as meister (master); this title has traditionally been taken to mean that he was of bourgeois rather than noble birth, but the term may also imply that he was a learned man, a master of arts. The initial letters of the quatrains with which Tristan und Isolde begins are G, D, I, E, T, E, R, I, C, H, T, and I; the G presumably stands for Gottfried, while T and I are the first letters of Tristan and Isolde.
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