Wolfram von Eschenbach was born around 1170 in Eschenbach, in Bavaria, and belonged to the petty knighthood. He may have taken part in one of the Crusades; he wrote at various courts; he died around 1220. Everything else once claimed about him was reconstructed from what he says of himself in his works — and that testimony cannot always be trusted.
He repeatedly professes, for instance, his own lack of education. Yet the text of Parzival carries such a freight of allusion, open and hidden, to imaginative literature and to learned treatises alike that the conclusion is inescapable: its author was, for his age, superbly educated. Perhaps by these disclaimers Wolfram meant to set himself apart from the traditions of Latin erudition — or simply, out of modesty, to make less of his own gifts.