Oswald von Wolkenstein

Oswald von Wolkenstein (1376 or 1377, presumably in Castle Schöneck in Kiens – August 2, 1445 in Merano) was a poet, composer and diplomat. In the latter capacity, he traveled through much of Europe, even as far as Georgia (as recounted in "Durch Barbarei, Arabia").

He was dubbed a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre and was also inducted into the Order of the Jar and the Order of the Dragon. He lived for a time in Seis am Schlern.

Oswald's father was Friedrich von Wolkenstein and his mother Katharina von Villanders. When he was ten years old, Oswald left his family and became squire of a knight errant. Oswald described the journeys undertaken by him in the following 14 years in his autobiographical song "Es fügt sich...", mentioning travels to Crete, Prussia, Lithuania, Crimea, Turkey, the Holy Land, France, Lombardy and Spain, as well as being shipwrecked in the Black Sea.

After the death of his father in 1399, Oswald returned to the Tyrol and began a drawn out quarrel with his older brother Michael about their inheritance. In 1401–02 Oswald participated in the failed Italian expedition of King Rupert of Germany. In 1407 he and his brother finally agreed on how to split the inheritance: Oswald received a third of Castle Hauenstein and the accompanying estates in Seis am Schlern. The other two thirds of the castle belong to a knight named Martin Jäger, but Oswald did not respect the property situation, occupying the entire castle and appropriating Jäger's share of the tithe. In 1408, in preparation for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Oswald paid for a memorial stone to be installed on the wall of the cathedral in Brixen. The stone has survived, and shows him in the garb of a Crusader, with the long beard associated with pilgrims. Before he left, he wrote several songs for his beloved, Anna Hausmann, the wife of the Brixner burgher Hans Hausmann. After his return in 1410 he acquired the right to take up residence in the Augustiner-Chorherren cloister Neustift near Brixen.

...
Wikipedia