Tannhauser is a minnesänger from Medieval history: Minnesang was the tradition of lyric and song writing in Germany which flourished in the 12th century and continued into the 14th century. People who wrote and performed Minnesang are known as Minnesingers (Minnesänger). The name derives from the word minne, Middle High German for love which was their main subject, and an individual song was a minnelied. The Minnesänger were similar to the Provençal troubadours and northern French trouvères; they wrote love poetry in the courtly love tradition in Middle High German in the High Middle Ages.

Richard Wagner the famous opera composer wrote an opera with the same name Tannhaüser. In here Tannhäuser is a character that has relations with venus the godess of love and in a quarrel he gets send back to earth. On earth he meets his previous fellow knights: Wolfram von Eschenbach and Walther von der Vogelweide, also both Minnesängers. In that age Minnesängers were high on the ladder of society, they were most often knights or of royal blood and they were allways looking for female beauty ^^.

The libretto of Tannhäuser combines the mythological element of German opera and the medieval history of French Grand Opera. Wagner brings these two together by constructing a plot involving the 14th century Minnesingers and the myth of Venus and her realm of Venusberg ('the mountain of Venus'). Both the historical and the mythological are united in Tannhäuser's personality; although he is a historical poet composer, little is known about him other than myths that surround him. Furthermore, half of the opera takes place in a historical setting, and half takes place in the mythological Venusberg.