Walther is undoubtedly the greatest of the lyric poets of the Middle High German period and has a good claim to be considered the greatest lyric poet of the Middle Ages.

His claim rests not so much on his supremacy in any one lyric type - Heinrich von Morungen and Reinmar der Alte are both better poets of true "Minnesang" - but on his great range, profound humanity, and mastery of love poetry, political poetry, and religious verse.

His deep concern about reflecting questions, which troubled not only the Germans of the Hohenstaufen period but which are the universal concern of thinking men at all times, gives him a timelessness rare in medieval poets.

His love poetry moves into a freer treatment of spontaneous love between two human beings, instead of being merely a study of the inner conflicts arising from courtly love service.

Love for Walther is, in his best poems, natural in the sense that it is part of nature’s plan.

Moreover, Walther also found it possible to treat the phenomenon of love with irony and humor.

He was deeply involved in the politics of his time, and it would be sentimental to say that his support of one or other candidate for the imperial throne was always based on his sense of what was best for Germany, or that personal considerations in these matters were unimportant; there is direct evidence to the contrary in his poetry.

Yet Walther had strong feelings about the role of a secular and, in particular, an imperial government in the world order which, according to medieval political thinking, was the ideal that all rulers must seek.

His call for strong government and for the exclusion of papal influence from German affairs is based on a real concern for the welfare of the German state.

He knew that outside interference could lead only to disunity among the German princes and the collapse of orderly government.

How correct this judgment was, can be appreciated if one reads the history of Germany in the thirteenth century.

Although he attacked papal interference in secular affairs, Walther was far from being an irreligious man.

Throughout his work he reveals his belief in the overriding importance of God’s mercy and in the necessity of living one’s life on earth in accordance with Christian concepts.