Parsifal (or Sir Percival) was a Knight of King Arthur, and his story was told by the troubadours of France and Germany, notably Chrétien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach. The Parsifal story stands between the past age that looked for secrets of the spirit and the coming age that was going to search for the secrets of matter. In the Waldorf education curriculum this story is recommended for Class 11 (age 16–17) as a way of introducing world literature and one of the central problems of our time—the imperative to learn to ask the right questions.

Charles Kovacs was born in Austria. He left his native country in 1938 at the time of the Anschluss and joined the British Army in East Africa. After the War, he settled in Britain, and in 1956 he took over a class at the Rudolf Steiner School in Edinburgh, where he remained a class teacher until his retirement in 1976. He died in 2001. His extensive lesson notes have been a useful and inspiring resource material for many teachers. He is the author of Parsifal and the Search for the Grail (2002); Ancient Greece (2003); The Age of Revolution (2003); and Ancient Rome (2005).