Wolfram von Eschenbach

[citation needed] The arms shown in the Manesse manuscript come from the imagination of a 14th-century artist, drawing on the figure of the Red Knight in Parzival, and have no heraldic connection with Wolfram.

[1] In his Parzival, Wolfram states that he is illiterate; while the claim is treated with scepticism by some scholars, the truth of the assertion, difficult for some moderns to believe,[2] is impossible to ascertain.

Based on Chrétien de Troyes' unfinished Perceval, le Conte du Graal, it is the first extant work in German to have as its subject the Holy Grail (in Wolfram's interpretation a gemstone).

In the poem, Wolfram's narrator expresses disdain for Chrétien's (unfinished) version of the tale, and states that his source was a poet from Provence called Kyot.

Schionatulander and Sigune are alone in a forest, when their peace is suddenly disturbed by a mysterious dog, whose leash contains a story written in rubies.

Willehalm, an unfinished poem based on the Old French chanson de geste, Aliscans, was a significant work, and has been preserved in 78 manuscripts.

The poem has many of the distinguishing features of medieval literature: the victory of the Christians over a much larger Saracen army, the touching death of the young knight Vivian, Willehalm's nephew and the works mirror of chivalric courage and spiritual purity.

Two melodies are still connected to him, the Schwarzer Thon, attributed to Wolfram in a 14th-century manuscript, and the fragmentary and unfinished epic Titurel (after 1217) with a complicated four-line stanza form that was often used in later poems.

The modern rediscovery of Wolfram begins with the publication of a translation of Parzival in 1753 by the Swiss scholar Johann Jakob Bodmer.