Walther von der Vogelweide, the most celebrated of the German Minnesänger poets, is believed to have begun his career at the Vienna court of Duke Leopold V around 1190, before that patron's death in 1194 prompted him to seek employment elsewhere as an itinerant court poet. Over the following decades Walther transformed the Minnesang tradition by introducing a broader range of subjects — political commentary, religious critique, peasant life, and personal moral reflection — alongside the conventional themes of courtly love. His work remains the pinnacle of medieval German lyric poetry and is the subject of extensive scholarly study.

Walther von der Vogelweide was the first major German-language poet to achieve a literary reputation comparable to the great Provençal troubadours. His influence on subsequent German lyric — from the Meistersingers celebrated by Wagner to the Romantic recovery of medieval verse — was enormous. Hans Sachs, the sixteenth-century Meistersinger who appears in Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, traced his tradition directly back to Walther, ensuring that Walther's name remained central to German cultural identity.