Walther von der Vogelweide

Walther von der Vogelweide composed and performed around 1170 to 1230, moving between princely courts with a lute and a sharp pen, particularly the Babenberg court in Vienna. He took the Minnesang tradition - courtly love songs - and pushed it somewhere new, writing not just romance like "Under der linden" but the first political poetry in German: encomium, satire, invective, moralising. Later in life the future Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II gave him a small fief, a rare anchor for a road poet. The Meistersingers who followed treated him as the standard, and his work spread wide: 32 manuscripts preserved his texts across the High German-speaking world, with the Codex Manesse holding roughly 90% of what survives, though only a few melodies made it through. He's been called the greatest German lyrical poet before Goethe.