Walther Von der Vogelweide

Walther Von der Vogelweide (c.1170–c.l230), most renowned medieval German lyric poet, or minnesinger. Walther's poetry was more politically oriented than that of other minnesingers, with about one-half of his 200 poems being moral, political, or religious in nature. These didactic poems encouraged such virtues as self-discipline, charity, and fidelity, and extolled the benefits of pilgrimage. The other half were love poems, which were fresh in their appraisal of courtly love and of the society of his time. Walther was a poet in the Viennese court of Leopold V, and later wandered from court to court until German Emperor Frederick II granted him a small fief in Wurzburg, where it is assumed that he lived out the remainder of his life.