Being the author of one of the most important
courtly romances in Middle High German literature,
PARZIVAL (ca. 1205), Wolfram also gained
great respect for his Crusade epic Willehalm (ca.
1218) and his dawn songs (see ALBA). No historical
document speaks about him, but on the basis of
internal evidence and references to him by other
poets, we know that he lived from ca. 1170 to ca.
1225.He identifies himself as a Bavarian, but obviously
hailed from a little town near Ansbach in
Franconia, Ober-Eschenbach, which renamed itselfWolframs-
Eschenbach in 1917, in honor of the
poet. In his ParzivalWolfram mentions his family
several times in a satirical fashion, but nothing
concrete is known about them. The Manessische
Liederhandschrift (MS. C, early 14th century) offers
a fictionalized portrait of Wolfram, entirely
covered by knightly armor, which implies that he
might have been of noble origin. He confirms this
observation by stating in his Parzival that he descended
from an aristocratic family and belonged
to the knightly class. Although he repeatedly emphasizes
that he is illiterate (Parzival 115, 27–30;
Willehalm 2, 19–22), this comment can only be
meant as satirical with respect to Latin and learned
literature, whereas the vast number of sources utilized
by Wolfram demonstrates his extensive
schooling. He was certainly familiar with the basic
disciplines taught at the universities, the trivium
and the quadrivium (see LIBERAL ARTS), but we do
not know whether he ever received formal training.
Insofar as he based both his Parzival and his
Willehalm on Old French sources (CHRÉTIEN DE
TROYES), he must have had very good knowledge of
French.
Late-medieval myths allude to a major competition
between Wolfram and contemporary authors
during a poetic tournament at the Castle
Wartburg in Eisenach, Thuringia, but we only
know for sure that Wolfram spent some time there,
sponsored by his patron, Landgrave Hermann I of
Thuringia (1190–1217). In his Parzival, Wolfram
refers to a war between Hermann and King Philipp
of Swabia, during which a vineyard near Erfurt was
destroyed in 1203, giving us a verifiable date post
quem (a date only after which the romance could
have been composed).Wolfram also wrote a short
fragmentary piece, Titurel (ca. 1220), in which he
picked up narrative elements that he had left undeveloped
in his Parzival.
Wolfram’s four dawn songs prove to be highly
sophisticated representatives of this genre, especially
as he was the first one to introduce the figure
of the castle guardian who alerts the lovers to
the approaching dawn and the need to separate.
In his dawn song “Der helnden minne ir klage” (no.
IV),Wolfram advocates marriage as a preferable
alternative to illicit love affairs. He also composed
three more traditional courtly love songs. In his
Willehalm,Wolfram explores, probably for the first
time in the Middle Ages, concepts of religious and
ethnic tolerance within the context of a highly
bloody battle poem. In his Parzival we come
across, for the first time in medieval literature, the
idea of interracial marriage, as Parzival’s father
Gahmuret marries the beautiful black Queen Belakane.
He leaves her again, but not because of
their racial or religious differences, as he pretends
in a letter to her, but because of his irrepressible
desire to pursue his knightly career.
In his Titurel, finally, Wolfram experiments
with the potentials of a literary fragment, the first
medieval poet to do so.Not only has this text come
down to us in two fragments, which would be a
very common phenomenon, but the author also
develops the idea of a fragment within his own text
where an enigmatic and highly fascinating text is
written on a dog leash. At the end the dog escapes
the female protagonist, Sigune, who then forces
her lover, Schionatulander, to recapture the dog
and so the text; otherwise, he would never enjoy
her love. Unfortunately, as we know from Parzival,
the young man will die in his pursuit of the dog,
unable to return either the dog or the text to his
beloved. By the mid-century, a very little known
poet, Albrecht (von Scharfenberg), composed a
continuation of the Titurel text, today called the
Jüngere Titurel, in which Schionatulander wins the
dog and eventually gives a communal reading of
the text on the leash, transforming it into a quasiliturgical
statement. This enormously popular text
(56 manuscripts, one print) was long thought to
have been Wolfram’s own creation, and Albrecht’s
authorship was not recognized until the early 19th
century.
Bibliography
Bumke, Joachim. Wolfram von Eschenbach. 7th ed.
Stuttgart:Metzler, 1997.
Hasty,Will, ed. A Companion to Wolfram’s Parzival.
Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1999.
Poag, James F. Wolfram von Eschenbach. New York:
Twayne, 1972.
Wynn,Marianne.“Wolfram von Eschenbach,” in German
Writers and Works of the High Middle Ages:
1170–1280, edited by James Hardin and Will
Hasty. Detroit: Gale Research, 1994, 185–206.
Albrecht Classen