Terra Parzival Regional
Years of work through IDRIART and its Slovenian representative organization Gandin Foundation has led to internationally acknowledged cultural work. Based on the connections between the castle Borl (Ankenstein) and the Wolfram of Eschenbach’s story of Parzival a substantial work has been invested in the past twenty years, innovating interdisciplinary, intercultural and transgenerational approach.
In the epic medieval poem “Parzival” the main hero’s way interestingly concerns the whole Slovenia, while author is specifically mentioning places in Celje region and today’s upper and lover Podravje. Eventually this has led to the idea of an extended project “Terra Parzival” where the story of Parzival is constituting the broaden, holistic understanding of the region – not only in terms of statistical regions as we know them today, but a region as a geographical, cultural and historical unity of this part of Europe. This, combined with the unique Macro Violin Approach, is forming the basis of the Terra Parzival – European Regional Development Model.
The story of Parzival
Around the year 1212 Wolfram von Eschenbach (1160 – 1220) created a magnificent epic about Parzival, Knights of the Round Table and the search for the Holy Grail. The 24,812 verses of the medieval epic story written in high German language a mysterious story about finding the human sense of spiritual growth, love, grief, growing up, and wisdom is hidden.
Parzival in Slovenia
Slovenian landscape is associated with Parzival in many ways. It is not just the fact that Slovenia, as Parzival as an individual, is itself geographically and culturally uniting east and west, the northern formative and southern life-giving forces, but it is also specifically mentioned in the content and an essential part Eschenbach’s epic Parzival.