Wolfram von Eschenbach (ca. 1170-ca. 1230), a German writer of chivalric romances, was one of the greatest poets of the Middle Ages. His masterpiece, Parzival, deals with the problem of man's attitude and relationship to God.

Wolfram von Eschenbach was born into a family of ministerial or lackland knights, probably in Wolframs Eschenbach (so named since 1917) in central Franconia near Ansbach. Roving, he practiced knighthood in Bavaria, Swabia, and Styria, as well as at home. In 1203 he visited the Wartburg court of Landgrave Hermann I of Thuringia. Wolfram probably wrote a part of his 25,000-line Parzival in Wildenberg Castle in the Odenwald. He held an unproductive fief near his hometown and thus was a vassal of the Count of Wertheim.

Early in his career Wolfram composed nine short poems, mostly "dawn songs"--a genre based upon the alba of Provençal troubadours, in which two lovers must end...