By birth, as Wolfram himself tells us, he belonged to the knightly order (Zum Schildesamt bin Ich geboren), though whether his family was noble or not is a disputed point, in any case Wolfram was a poor man, as the humorous allusions which he makes to his poverty abundantly testify. Yet he does not seem to have led the life of a wandering singer, as did his famous contemporary, Walther von der Vogelweide; if Wolfram journeyed, as he probably did, it was rather in search of knightly adventures, he tells us: 'Durchstreifen muss Der Lande viel, Wer Schildesamt verwalten will,' and though fully conscious of his gift of song, yet he systematically exalts his office of _knight_ above that of _poet_. The period when Wolfram lived and sang, we cannot say _wrote_, for by his own confession he could neither read nor write ('I'ne kan decheinen buochstap,' he says in _Parzival_; and in _Willehalm_, 'Waz an den buochen steht geschrieben, Des bin Ich kunstelos geblieben'), and his poems must, therefore, have been orally dictated, was one peculiarly fitted to develop his special genius. Under the rule of the Hohenstaufen the institution of knighthood had reached its highest point of glory, and had not yet lapsed into the extravagant absurdities and unrealities which characterised its period of decadence; and the Arthurian romances which first found shape in Northern France had just passed into Germany, there to be gladly welcomed, and to receive at the hands of German poets the impress of an ethical and philosophical interpretation foreign to their original form.