WIELAND, CHRISTOPH MARTIN (1733-1813), Ger man poet and man of letters, was born at Oberholzheim, a village near Biberach in WUrttemberg, on Sept. 5, 1733. His father, who was pastor in Oberholzheim, and subsequently in Biberach, took great pains with the child's education, and sent him to the gym nasium at Klosterberge, near Magdeburg. Under the influence of a first love-affair, with Sophie Gutermann, he planned his first ambitious work, Die Natur der Dinge (1752), a didactic poem in six books. In 175o he went to Tubingen to study law, but his time was mainly taken up with literary studies. The poems he wrote at the university-Hermann, an epic (published by F. Muncker, 1886), Zwolf moralische Briefe in V ersen (1752), Anti-Ovid (1752)-are pietistic in tone and dominated by the influence of Klopstock. They attracted the attention of J. J. Bodmer, who invited Wieland to visit him in Zurich in the sum mer of 1752. After a few months, however, Bodmer felt himself as little in sympathy with Wieland as, two years earlier, he had felt himself with Klopstock, and the friends parted; but Wieland remained in Switzerland until 176o, residing, in the last year, at Berne where he obtained a position as private tutor. Here he stood in intimate relations with Rousseau's friend Julie de Bondeli. Meanwhile a change had come over Wieland's tastes ; the writings of his early Swiss years-Der gePriifte Abraham (1753), Sym pathien (1756), Empfindungen eines Christen (1757)-were still in the manner of his earlier writings, but with the tragedies, Lady Johanna Gray (1758) , and Clementina von Porretta ( I 760)-the latter based on Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison-the epic fragment Cyrus (1759), and the "moral story in dialogues," Araspes und Panthea (176o), Wieland, as Lessing said, "forsook the ethereal spheres to wander again among the sons of men." Wieland's conversion was completed at Biberach, whither he had returned in 1760, as director of the chancery. He had access to the library at Warthausen of Count Stadion. Here he met once more Sophie Gutermann, who had meanwhile become the wife of Hofrat Laroche, then manager of Count Stadion's es tates. The former poet of an austere pietism now became the advocate of a light-hearted philosophy, from which frivolity and sensuality were not excluded. In Don Sylvio von Rosalva (1764), a romance in imitation of Don Quixote, he held up to ridicule his earlier faith and in the Komische Erzdhlungen (1765) he gave his extravagant imagination only too free a rein. More important is the novel Geschichte des Agathon (1766-1767), in which, under the guise of a Greek fiction, Wieland described his own spiritual and intellectual growth. This work, which Lessing recommended as "a novel of classic taste," is a landmark in the development of the modern psychological novel. Of equal importance was Wie land's translation of twenty-two of Shakespeare's plays into prose (8 vols., 1762-1766) ; it was the first attempt to present the
English poet to the German people in something approaching entirety. With the poems Musarion oder die Philosophie der Grazien (1768 ) , Idris (1768), Combabus (177o), Der neue Ama dis (1771), Wieland opened the series of light and graceful romances in verse which acted as an antidote to the sentimental excesses of the subsequent Sturm und Drang movement.
Wieland married in 1765, and between 1769 and 1772 was professor of philosophy at Erfurt. In the last-mentioned year he published Der goldene Spiegel oder die Konige von Scheschian, a pedagogic work in the form of oriental stories ; this attracted the attention of duchess Anna Amalie of Saxe-Weimar, who appointed him tutor to her two sons, Karl August and Konstantin, at Weimar. With the exception of some years spent at Ossmann stedt, where in later life he bought an estate, Weimar remained Wieland's home until his death on Jan. 20, 1813. Here, in 1773, he founded Der Deutsche Merkur, which under his editorship (1773-1789) became the most influential literary review in Ger many. Of the writings of his later years the most important are the admirable satire on German provinciality-the most attrac tive of all his prose writings-Die Abderiten, eine sehr wahr scheinliche Geschichte (1774), and the charming poetic romances, Das Wintermarchen (1776), Das Sommermhrchen (1777), Geron der Adelige (1777), Die Wiinsche oder Pervonte (1778), a series culminating with Wieland's poetic masterpiece, the romantic epic of Oberon (178o). His later work included novels, translations of Horace, Lucian and Cicero, and the editing of the Attisches Museum (1796-1803).
Without creating a school in the strict sense of the term, Wie land influenced very considerably the German literature of his time. Modern editions of Wieland's Siimtliche Werke are those of H. Diintzer (4 vols., 1879-82), and the critical edition issued by the Prussian Academy (1909, etc.).
There are numerous editions of selected works, notably W. Bolsche (4 vols., 1902). Collections of Wieland's letters were edited by his son Ludwig (1815) and by H. Gessner (1815-16) ; his letters to Sophie La Roche by F. Horn (1820). See J. G. Gruber, C. M. Wielands Leben (4 vols., 1827-28) ; H. Doting, C. M. Wieland (1853) ; J. W. Loebell, C. M. Wieland (1858) ; H. Prohle, Lessing, Wieland, Heinse (1876) ; L. F. Ofterdinger, Wielands Leben und Wirken in Schwaben und in der Schweiz (1877) ; R. Kiel, Wieland und Reinhold (1885) ; F. Thal meyr, tIber Wielands Klassizitdt, Sprache und Stil (1894) ; M. Doll, Wieland und die Antike (1896) ; C. A. Behmer, Sterne und Wieland (1899) ; W. Lenz, Wielands Verhaltnis zu Spenser, Pope and Swift (1903) ; L. Hirzel, Wielands Beziehungen zu den deutschen Roman tikern (1904). See also M. Koch's article in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (1897). (J. G. R.)