born 0441; 1170
died 0441; 1220
German poet.
An impoverished Bavarian knight, Wolfram apparently served a succession of lords. The epic "Parzival," one of his eight surviving lyric poems, is one of the masterpieces of the Middle Ages; likely based on a romance by Chrétien de Troyes , it introduced the theme of the Holy Grail into German literature. Richard Wagner used it as the basis for his last opera, Parsifal (1882). Wolfram's influence on later poets was profound, and, with Hartmann von Aue and Gottfried von Strassburg , he is one of the three great Middle High German epic poets.