ULRICH VON LIECHTENSTEIN, a Middle High German poet, born about 1200, and died in 1276. He was the author of the poem ent.i.tled _Frauendienst_, described in this volume, and also of a didactic poem called _Frauenbuch_.
WALTHARIUS ET HILTGUNDE, or simply Waltharius, a Latin poem of the tenth century in hexameter verse, and consisting of between fourteen hundred and fifteen hundred lines. Its authorship is unknown.
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE, the greatest German poet of the Middle Ages.
He was born about 1160, and died about 1230. He was of a knightly family, though poor, and much of his life was spent at the courts of several German princes and emperors. He wrote not only love-poems, but in the contest that went on between the imperialists and the papacy, he supported the side of the former in patriotic verses which had no slight influence upon contemporary opinion. Both for matter and manner he stood at the head of the poets called minnesingers.
WERNHER THE GARDENER, a German poet of the thirteenth century, who composed, between 1234 and 1250, the story of _Meier Helmbrecht_.
Nothing is known with certainty of his life.
WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH, a German poet, of n.o.ble birth, of the latter half of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth. He died about 1220. His greatest work is the _Parzival_, which was completed about 1210. It was founded, according to his own statement, partly upon the _Conte del Graal_ of Chrestien de Troyes, but more particularly upon the work of a poet whom he calls Kyot, who is supposed by some to be Guyot de Provins, whose romance of _Perceval_, not extant, is a.s.sumed to be the original of Wolfram"s poem. Another of his poems was the unfinished _t.i.turel_, which contains the tale of the love of Schionatulander and Sigune.
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