Talk:Christoph Martin Wieland

Untitled
Just a note on why I think the editions and literature section of these old encyclopedia entries should be pruned. I feel it's important to note the date the subject lived and compare it with the date of the article, ie. 1911. The references quoted will be the ones that were most recent in 1911. For a start, most of the biographies and old periodical articles are almost certainly unobtainable. More to the point, there will have been others published since (that's assuming the subject of the article has any true significance) that will have brought modern scholarship -- and, possibly, new research and new information -- to bear on the subject. I therefore feel it is misleading to retain all the references from the 1911 edition. Perhaps someone would like to join me in debating this. Deb 13:56, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * 1. the references aren't wrong; obsolete references can go into a separate article, though--but as long as the article isn't longer than 30kb, there is no need to split it.
 * 2. some editions are still "valid", esp. the "last hand" edition (1794-1802, okay, you didn't delete it) and the Academy edition.
 * 3. Writings by Reemtsma are very recent.
 * 4. the biography by J.G. Gruber is still valid.

--Keichwa 20:19, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

WIELAND, CHRISTOPH MARTIN (1733–1813), German writer, publisher, and classicist and one of the most influential literary figures of the German Enlightenment. The son of a Lutheran minister, Christoph Martin Wieland was born in Oberholzheim, Upper Swabia, near the imperial city of Biberach on 5 September 1733. At the age of thirteen, after attending the local public school of Biberach, Wieland was sent to Klosterbergen in the vicinity of Magdeburg, one of the most prestigious boarding schools of the time. Already an avid reader, Wieland acquired the reputation of a freethinker and, not surprisingly, his literary interests proved stronger than his dedication to his law studies at Tübingen (1750–1751). From 1752 to 1759, he was a student of the literary polemicist Johann Jakob Bodmer (1698–1783) in Zurich. After working as a private tutor in Bern (1759–1760) and as a professor of philosophy at the University of Erfurt (1769–1772), Wieland became the tutor of Karl August, the future duke of Weimar, in 1772.

Many of Wieland's works reflect his love of the classics and his profound knowledge of European literature, both of which become evident through his numerous commentaries and his often-criticized Shakespeare translations. Influenced by Bodmer (the teacher of the German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock [1724–1803]), Wieland's early works such as Die Natur der Dinge (1751; The nature of things) are profoundly religious in character, whereas his later works become more frivolous and suggestive in tone. Autobiographical elements appear with striking frequency in most of Wieland's writings. From 1760 to 1769, for example, Wieland served as municipal administrator in Biberach. Some of his experiences as a public administrator reappear in comic form in his later work Die Geschichte der Abderiten (1781; translated as The republic of fools, 1861), which belongs to the category of fools' literature and pointedly ridicules bourgeois pettiness and the fruitlessness of religious quarrels. Probably the first socially critical novel, Die Geschichte der Abderiten systematically portrays life in the Republic of Abdera, the ancient Greek symbol of folly, where things happen in reversal of what one would consider normal. His earlier works Der Sieg der Natur über die Schwärmerey, oder die Abenteuer des Don Sylvio von Rosalva (1764; translated as Reason triumphant over fancy, exemplified in the singular adventures of Don Sylvio de Rosalva, 1773) and Der goldene Spiegel (1772; The golden mirror) reveal Wieland's potential as a future novelist. Scholars view his most famous work, Die Geschichte des Agathon (1766/1767; The history of Agathon), which appeared in several revised editions between 1773 and 1793, as the first and one of the finest examples of the genre of the Bildungs-roman (novel concerned with the intellectual or spiritual development of the main character). Influenced by Euripides's play Ion, Die Geschichte des Agathon uses a classical setting and focuses on the discrepancy between youthful idealism and the harsh realities of life. Kidnapped by pirates from his sheltered home at Delphi, its hero Agathon, who arguably could be seen as a reflection of Wieland's own youthful self, endures a long odyssey of fruitless searching for wisdom and happiness. As a disillusioned old man, Agathon eventually realizes that human beings rarely act the way they should and that the purpose of life must be to find a compromise between head and heart, which means between rational thought and human passions.

Many of Wieland's works, such as his Die Geschichte der Abderiten, first appeared as sequels in his own literary journal Der teutsche Merkur (The German Mercury). Wieland had cultivated the idea of creating a literary journal for a considerable time and was able to realize this goal with the help of the Jacobi brothers in 1772, during his time in Weimar. Wieland's presence at Weimar contributed to the duchy's rise to prominence as Germany's cultural capital because it attracted figures such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Friedrich Page 212 |  Top of Article von Schiller (1759–1805) as well. Wieland's relationship to Goethe and Schiller became strained over the years and eventually culminated in a polemic campaign against the aging poet. Proponents of the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) movement initiated the campaign against Wieland and were joined at a later stage by adherents of the rising Romantic movement. Nonetheless, during his final years, Wieland's residence at Weimar became a place of pilgrimage for Germany's most noted and promising writers.

Wieland's reputation as one of the most prominent writers of his age is probably best illustrated by the poet's decoration with the Cross of the Legion of Merit in 1808 by Napoleon Bonaparte. Celebrated as the "German Voltaire" during his lifetime, Wieland's literary contribution fell into near oblivion in the nineteenth century, and scholars have only recently come to view him as one of the most important literary figures of the German Enlightenment as well as a precursor of German classicism and Romanticism. See also Enlightenment ; German Literature and Language.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Wieland, Christoph Martin. Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften. Hildesheim, 1986–1987. ——. The History of Agathon. Translated from the German. London, 1773. ——. History of the Abderites. Translated and with an introduction by Max Dufner. Bethlehem, Pa., 1993. ——. Musarion and Other Rococo Tales. Translated and with an introduction by Thomas C. Starnes. Columbia, S.C., 1991. ——. Oberon: A Poem from the German by Wieland. Translated by William Sotheby. New York, 1978. Originally published London, 1798. ——. Sämtliche Werke. Edited by Heinrich Düntzer. 40 vols. Berlin, 1879.

Secondary Sources

Baldwin, Claire. The Emergence of the Modern German Novel: Christoph Martin Wieland, Sophie von La Roche, and Maria Anna Sagar. Rochester, N.Y., 2002. Budde, Bernhard. Aufklärung als Dialog: Wieland's antithetische Prosa. Tübingen, 2000. Erhart, Walter. Entzweiung und Selbstaufklärung. Christoph Martin Wieland's "Agathon" Projekt. Tübingen, 1991. Günther, Gottfried, and Heidi Zeilinger. Wieland-Bibliographie. Berlin, 1983. Jørgensen, Sven-Aage et al. Christoph Martin Wieland: Epoche-Werk-Wirkung. Munich, 1994. Kurth-Voigt, Lieselotte E. Perspectives and Points of View: The Early Works of Wieland and their Background. Baltimore, 1974. Mayer, Gerhart. Der deutsche Bildungsroman: Von der Aufklärung bis zur Gegenwart. Stuttgart, 1992. McCarthy, John A. Christoph Martin Wieland. Boston, 1979. Schelle, Hansjörg, ed. Christoph Martin Wieland: Nordamerikanische Forschungsbeiträge zur 250. Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages 1983. Tübingen, 1984. Shookman, Ellis. Noble Lies, Slant Truths, Necessary Angels: Aspects of Fictionality in the Novels of Christoph Martin Wieland. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1997. ULRICH GROETSCH Source Citation  (MLA 7th Edition) GROETSCH, ULRICH. "Wieland, Christoph Martin (1733–1813)." Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World. Ed. Jonathan Dewald. Vol. 6. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2004. 211-212. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 5 July 2015. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:201:C002:42F:B0B4:89FD:8998:B873 (talk) 10:41, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Wieland spent many evenings at the well known Wieland family guest house "Sonne Post"
"Wieland spent many evenings at the well known Wieland family guest house and tavern Sonne Post in Neuhuetten. Here in the quiet guest house gardens the former poet of an austere pietism now became the advocate of a light-hearted philosophy, from which frivolity and sensuality were not excluded."

Any hint where this could possibly be documented? Otherwise this should be deleted. Waldbuesser (talk) 16:47, 7 November 2015 (UTC)


 * I couldn't find any source for this and deleted it. Must have been a hoax - because what is an 18th cent. "family guest house" supposed to be (they didn't have B'n'Bs back then)? Plus the combination "Sonne Post" is extremely unlikely as a name for a pub. Albrecht Conz (talk) 23:26, 7 November 2015 (UTC)


 * I hope to find a source for this statement. Since march 2008 this sentance is included in the biography. I can't understand your thinking. I live 10 miles away from Neuhuetten and there is an old pub called Sonne-Post. About 1860 ( perhaps before this time) this pub also included a poststation. Since 1860 the owner of this house is the family Wieland. First Wieland were born in Neuhütten in 1664. The guesthouse is proably built 1700 or 1760 (written in a stone in the cellar). That's why it is possible that Wieland was there.Waldbuesser (talk) 16:12, 8 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Without a source it's nothing but guesswork - and the possibility that Wieland was there means, we do not know. The fact that a "Wieland family" has owned such a pub since 1860 doesn't mean anything either, as long as you can't establish a family relationship (and Wieland died in 1813), nor provide evidence that this pub was named "Sonne-Post" during Wieland's lifetime, nor that Wieland was ever near this place. - Unsourced speculative assertions should not be part of the article. (As an aside, "guest house" doesn't mean "Gasthaus" and "Neuhuetten" should be spelled "Neuhütten"). Albrecht Conz (talk) 21:42, 8 November 2015 (UTC)


 * You are right, unsourced speculative assertions should not be part.

Schade nur, daß (englische Fassung) jeder ohne Quellenangabe veröffentlichen kann und das auch noch, ohne einen Namen anzugeben wie hier am 7. März 2008 der user 67.85.66.82 (Italy ?). Mehrere Webseiten (u.A. http://www.geni.com/people/Christoph-Wieland/ )haben die Biografie so übernommen obwohl viele Stellen nicht belegt sind. Die Sonne-Post war übrigens eine Königliche Poststation, wo man auch übernachten konnte. Wieland ist auf jeden Fall auf mindestens einer seiner Reisen über Heilbronn und Schwäbisch Hall (dort Freund Friedrich David Gräter) gekommen, wofür ich auch eine Quelle gefunden habe. Neuhütten liegt auf dem alten Postweg in der Mitte von Heilbronn nach Schwäbisch Hall. Waldbuesser (talk) 19:43, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

NB I have semi-translated the previous post, below: MinorProphet (talk) 16:14, 10 September 2017 (UTC)


 * "Too bad that in the English version everyone can publish without source indication even without a name, as user 67.85.66.82 (Italy?) here on the 7th of March 2008. Several websites (among others http://www.geni.com/people/Christoph-Wieland/) have adopted the biography in this way although many places are not occupied. The Sonne-Post was, incidentally, a royal post office, where one could also stay. Wieland definitely came on at least one of his travels via Heilbronn and Schwäbisch Hall (where his friend Friedrich David Gräter was), for which I have also found a source. Neuhütten is on the old Post road between Heilbronn to Schwäbisch Hall." Waldbuesser, 19:43, 10 November 2015 (UTC)