Christoph Martin Wieland

Christoph Martin Wieland , born the September 5th 1733 in Oberholzheim (Souabe) and dead the January 20th 1813 with Weimar, is a Poète, Traducteur and German editor .

Wieland is, with Lessing and Lichtenberg, the most important author of the oldest Aufklärung in Germany and of the authors of the Classicisme of Weimar (see also Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich von Schiller).

Wire of a protesting minister, Wieland showed in its studies an extreme precocity and wanted to undertake, at twelve years, a great poem on the destruction of Jerusalem. Of an extraordinarily mobile nature, it was subject to the influence of the medium and the entourage, and it was a prelude to with the spirit of mocking remark and Satire by the Mysticisme more exalté. With the college of Kloster Berge close Magdeburg, where it entered at the fourteen years age, it was let dominate by the Piétisme and the Théosophie. Soon it threw with passion in the study of the ancient Greece and the English Littérature contemporary. French authors, Bayle, Voltaire, and the free thinkers French of added new elements to the fermentation of its ideas.

Hardly seventeen years old, it conceived a romantic passion, whose its whole life felt, for an young girl of Biberach, Marie Sophie Gutermann von Gutershofen, which was to become, under the name of Sophie von the Rock, a woman of letters distinguished and to form around her a circle of beautiful spirits. Wieland went to spend several years to Tübingen to study the Droit there, but it gave all its time to the Littérature and the Poésie, under the inspiration of its first love. It is at that time that he wrote Hymnes (1751) with the manner of Klopstock, a didactic poem: Die Natur der Dinge. Ein Lehrgedicht in 6 Büchern ( the Nature of the things or Brave New World , 1757), obscure and enthusiastic exposure of optimistic metaphysics; Zwölf moralische Briefe in Versen ( Letters morals , Heilbronn, 1752), in worms Alexandrine S; Briefe von Verstorbenen year hinterlassene Freunde ( Letters of died with their surviving friends , Zurich, 1753), all penetrated of the memories of philosophy Plato ician.

The leaning one of Wieland for the Christian ideas and the purely Germanic literary traditions was strengthened by its relations with Klopstock and the old man Bodmer who called it near him as secretary, and of which it defended the religious and literary principles warmly. Wieland was exerted then, according to the program of the Swiss school, with the epopee. Its first poem, der Geprüfte Abraham ( the Test of Abraham , 1753), its Moralische Erzählungen ( moral Accounts , 1753), sentimental imitation of the English works of Elizabeth Rowe; its Cyrus finally (1759), whose true hero is, under the features of that of Xénophon, Frederic Large the, belong to the manner of Klopstock and Bodmer.

A complete revolution is achieved however at Wieland when, after having been several years tutor in Zurich and Bern, it returned in 1760 in Biberach, where it fulfills the functions of director of the chancellery. The sight of the men and the reality of the life under their true day folded back many of its sentimental daydreams. The marriage of its dear Sophie with Georg Michael Franck von the Rock, secretary of the count Stadion, carried the last blow to its illusions. He lived in the company of this woman and of the count Stadion and familiarized itself with the writings of Young, Shaftesbury, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, etc

Consequently, the sour and light spirit of freedom suitable for definitively influenced its burning imagination, its German and Christian enthusiasm, its erudite predilections for philosophy and the Greek letters. We will find the effects of this fusion in its best works. In 1765, Wieland married a woman simple and pleasant who, proper consent of this one, lute never only one page of her husband, but who made it happy by her kindness and gave him fourteen children in twenty years. Shortly after it was named professor of philosophy to the college of Erfurt where it spent three years, announced by many philosophical and political publications. In 1772, the duchess of Saxony-Gotha, Anne-Amélie, called it near to entrust it, him the education of his/her two children. With Weimar, Wieland found a court literary very brilliant, where were joined together with him Gœthe, Friedrich Justin Bertuch, Karl Ludwig von Knebel, Schiller, Herder, Musäus, Voigt, Einsiedel, and a crowd of distinguished men. It was for him the happiest time of its life and its literary activity. It spent there thirty-five years, only stopped by one voyage in Switzerland, where it accepted the most gracious reception and most enthusiastic, in spite of its bright renunciation of the traditions of the Swiss school.

Of 1798 with 1803, Wieland lived, surrounded by its many family, in the small field of Oßmannstedt which it had bought close to Weimar, where it received the visits and the homages of the most important people of the time, and, following Germaine of Staël, its conversation was even more brilliant than its writings. The reverses reached it in this retirement and drove out some. It returned to Weimar, almost without fortune, having lost his wife and a girl of Sophie idiot the Rock which it had adopted. Its popularity suffered from the political revolutions; he had applauded the beginnings of the French revolution, then repudiated his bloody excesses. Lampoons violent one were published against him. The Bataille of Iéna brought to him, with deads homages, new tests: Napoleon made place a guard in front of the house of the poet to protect it, but the order had been given too late, and the house was plundered basic in roof. The Emperor wanted to see itself Wieland and endeavoured to be pleasant towards the poet who did not see in him that a “bronze man”. He decorated it with the Légion with honor and the Alexandre tsar about Holy-Anne. Neither these testimonys nor the constant friendship of the duke of Weimar, his pupil, could tear off Wieland with the dark melancholy which inspired to him, in the middle of the constraint of Germany, the successive loss of his/her more famous friends. He succumbed to the infirmities of old age and was buried, according to his desire, in Osmannstaedt beside his wife. He had been elected member of the Institut.

Wieland is one of the three or four literary great names of Germany of. Without being one of the first by the power of the invention, it is one of most original by the variety and the flexibility of its faculties. Few German writers produced as much, and on such various subjects; it was called “the Voltaire of Germany”, titrates that it deserved less by the number of his writings than by the quickness of mind, the thanks, lightness, linked to the good sense and an immense knowledge. It had the insatiable curiosity of the philosopher, the first hand scholarship of a scientist of profession, it laughing imagination of the poet, all the charm of style of the storyteller. It had been familiarized with the best writers of antiquity and had worked with their manner of writing lash translating their works. The modern languages were not less known to him, and it had thoroughly the two literatures of France and England which then disputed the intellectual domination of its country. Wieland softened the German language, gave him promptness and elegance; it substituted, in versification, the facility, the grace and the harmony with a heavy solemnity. It brought back there the musical element of the Rime, that Klopstock had banished its worms, for better returning to the Greek meter.

The greatest merit of Wieland is to have drawn the German literature from the emphatic eccentricity and pedant where the research of the national originality involved. II made fall in front of him the barriers from the world ideal, Christian and metaphysical and let reality take again its rights. Enemy of the ascetic austerity, it made with the epicureanism his place in art; he wanted the MUSE more alive, with the risk to be less pure. He moderated the Christian influence by the pagan influence, associated the directions with the reason, and the spirit with the feeling. Disciple of Lucien, of Horace, Arioste, it did not scorn the legends of the so expensive Moyen-âge to Germanic imagination, but it wanted to treat them while arising from. Germaine de Staël perfectly marked, in Germany, the characters which bring closer or separate Wieland from its French contemporaries. Many writings of Wieland, most remarkable are its poems of the kind heroic and héroï-comic, that the Germans call readily epopee S. Its masterpiece, in this kind, is the Oberon in four songs (1780). The other narrative poems of Wieland are numerous. One quotes a series of Komische Erzählungen ( comic Récits , 1762) where the spirit of the author is pricked little to remain moral; then Musarion (1768), kind of epopee didactic on the role of the graces in the life and art, inspired by the general tendency of the author bring back the aspirations of the Platonisme to a feeling in conformity with reality; die Grazien ( the Graces , 1770), forming the continuation of the preceding poem and where the subject inspired the poet perfectly; DER verklagte Amor ( marked Love , 1774), answer to the reproaches addressed to erotic poetry in the name of morals; Idris and Zénide (1777, in five songs, unfinished account of real adventures frays to the fairyhood of chivalrous times, making leave the contrast of the platonic love and the sensual love a mixed feeling which reconcile one and the other; Neuer Amadis ( New Amadis , 1771), the least moral poem of adventures in eighteen songs, sharpest, merriest, most spiritual and of the author; Erzählungen und Marchen ( Accounts and tales , 1776 - 1778), majority legendary; Wintermarchen ( Tales of winter , 1776); der Vogelsang ( Song of the bird , 1778), Gandalin (1776), Clélie and Sinibald (1778), etc

Wieland was also made a place distinguished in the Romance and the philosophical compositions where the account serves as a pretext for imagination, the right ideas, or the paradoxes. Its language is still of a great flexibility in this kind, where the influence of the French writers is noticed in turn, of the Greek authors, Roman and Eastern. One will mention Araspe and Penthée writes in the form of Dialog; Gift Silvio de Rosalva, or victory of nature over the madness (1761), imitation of the Don Quichotte with less naivety in the satirical painting of the romantic or romantic world, through which the author reaches the various illusions of youth and enthusiasm; Agathon (1766 - 1767), most important of the works of this kind, where Wieland appears to be painted itself and where, within the framework of the inspiration voltairienne, it lavished all the richnesses of its scholarship, its imagination and its personal philosophy, appearance of the Greek genius, worrying little to be done Christian and hardly spiritualistic remainder; Nachlass of Diogens ( Succession of Diogène , 1770), apology for the whimsical literature, which refuses to compel poetry has an ascetic ideal, in the name of the virtue; Abderiten ( Abdéritains , 1774), comic painting of the quarrels produced in a small town by the interests and intrigues of the clergy and the ignorance of the aristocracy; der Goldene Spiegel ( the gold Mirror, 1772), one of its principal novels written under the influence of French philosophy, and being used as framework with the development of a social Utopia, recommended to the government of the emperor Joseph II; Peregrinus Protée (1791), or the life and the suicide of a charlatan serve as a pretext for a critical talk of the life of Apollonius de Thyane, with the explanation of the miracles allotted to the religious exaltation; Göttergespräche ( Dialogs of the Gods , 1791), and Gespräche in Elysium ( Dialogs of the Elysium , 1792), where the discussion of the great questions of the day is appeared as imitations very-sharp of Lucien, the preferred model of the author; Agathodaemon (1796), during Peregrinus , opposing to the superstitious contagion that philanthropy vainly seeks to replace, healthy faith of the first Christians; Aristippe (1800), continuation of letters between the disciple of Socrate] and principal characters of his time on the life and the morals of the Greeks and on true practical wisdom; Ménandre and Glycérion (1804); Cratès and Hypparchia (1805), also in the form of letters, and the last works written by Wieland. This so flexible and so sharp spirit had little success to the theater. It gave a middle-class drama, Clémentine of Porretta (1760); a historical tragedy, Jane Grey (1758), imitated of English of Elisabeth Rowe; Opera S, Alceste (1773) and Rosamonde (1778), the first was the occasion of the writing of Schiller entitled the Gods, the Heroes and Wieland or it show that Wieland entirely deteriorated the character of Greek antiquity.

The translations hold a rather great place in the work of Wieland; one owes him those of Shakespeare (Zurich, 1762 - 1766, 2 vol.), of the Épîtres of Horace (Dessau, 1782, 2 parts), of his Satires (Leipzig, 1786, 2 parts), of the Œuvres of Lucien ( ibid , 1788 - 1789, 6 parts), of the Lettres of Cicéron (Zurich, 1808 - 1809, 3 parts), Ausgewählte Briefe ( collection of the selected Letters , 1751 - 1810), which throws one day particular on the development of the literary and religious ideas of Wieland.etc.

It is also necessary to mention its Deutscher Merkur ( German Mercure ; Weimar, 1773 - 1789), become later the Neuer deutscher Merkur ( New German Mercury ; Weimar and Leipzig, 1788 - 1810), the literary periodic writing most important of Germany during forty years and in which Goethe, Schiller and other famous writers collaborated.

The complete Works of Wieland, joined together by itself ( Sämmtliche Werke ; Leipzig, 1794 - 1802, 36 vol. in-4°, in-8° and in-16; Supplements , 1796, 6 vol.), were republished by J. - G. Gruber (Leipzig, 1818 - 28, 53 vol.; ibid , 1839 - 40, 36 vol.).

Works

Zwölf moralische Briefe in Versen , Heilbronn, 1752.
Der Sieg der Natur über die Schwärmerei oder die Abenteuer of the Gift Sylvio von Rosalva , Ulm, 1764.
Geschichte of Agathon , Frankfurt & Leipzig, Zurich, 1766-7
Musarion, oder die Philosophy der Grazien , Leipzig, 1768
Idris und Zenide , Leipzig, 1768.
Nadine , Leipzig, 1769.
Combabus , Leipzig, 1770.
Die Grazien , Leipzig, 1770.
DER neue Amadis , Leipzig, 1771.
DER goldene Spiegel, oder die Könige von Scheschian , Leipzig, 1772.
Die Geschichte der Abderiten , Leipzig, 1774
Oberon (work, 1780)|Oberon , Weimar, 1780.
Dschinnistan , 3 flights., Winterthur, 1786-1789
Aristipp und einige seiner Zeitgenossen , 4 flights., Leipzig, Göschen, 1800-2

Bibiliography

J.G. Gruber, C.M. Wielands Leben (4 flights., 1827-1828)
H. Doring, C.M. Wieland (1853)
J.W. Loebell, C.M. Wieland (1858)
Heinrich Pröhle, Lessing, Wieland, Heinse (1876)
L.F. Ofterdinger, Wielands Leben und Wirken in Schwaben und in der Schweiz (1877)
R. Keil, Wieland und Reinhold (1885)
F. Thalmeyr, Über Wielands Klassizität, Sprache und SM (1894)
Mr. Doll, Wieland und die Antike (1896)
A.C. Behmer, Tern und Wieland (1899)
W. Lenz, Wielands Verhältnis zu Spenser, Pope und Swift (1903)
L. Hirzel, Wielands Beziehungen zu den deutschen Romantikern (1904)
Mr. Koch' S article in the Al deutsche Biography (1897)
Jan Philipp Reemtsma: Das Buch vom Ich, Christoph Martin Wielands” Aristipp und einige seiner Zeitgenossen, 1993
Jan Philipp Reemtsma: Der Liebe Maskentanz. Aufsätze zum Werk Christoph Martin Wielands, 1999

Source

Gustave Vapereau, universal Dictionary of the literatures , Paris, Hatchet, 1876, p. 2074-6

External bonds

Bonds external with the comments
All texts of C. Mr. Wieland on Internet
Biography
'' Der Teutsche Merkur '' (1773-89)
'' Der Neue Teutsche Merkur '' (1790 - 1810)
Wieland and Abderiten

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