His poems were written down from dictation. It is noted in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain that 'the greatest poet of the Middle Ages, Wolfram von Eschenbach, could neither read nor write,' and the Catholic Encyclopedia observes: 'Wolfram in his Parzival tells us explicitly that he could neither read nor write. But it has been credited by many commentators. 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, is impossible to ascertain. He was presumably not a wealthy man, as he made frequent allusions to his own poverty. Wolfram's work indicates a number of possible patrons (most reliably Hermann I of Thuringia), which suggests that he served at a number of courts during his life. 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. However, the evidence is circumstantial and not without problems - there are at least four other places named Eschenbach in Bavaria, and Wolframs-Eschenbach was not part of the Duchy of Bavaria ( Altbayern) in Wolfram's time. This and a number of geographical references have resulted in the present-day Wolframs-Eschenbach, until 1917 Obereschenbach, near Ansbach in present-day Bavaria, being officially designated as his birthplace.

In Parzival, he talks of wir Beier ('we Bavarians') the dialect of his works is East Franconian. There are no historical documents which mention him, and his works are the sole source of evidence. Statue of Wolfram at Burg Abenberg castle in Abenberg

Parsifal wolfram von eschenbach