Wieland, CHRISTOPH MARTIN, a writer who, more in virtue of his tendency and his style than of his actual literary achievements, occupies a prominent place in the history of German literature. The son of a Swabian pastor, and born near Biberach on 5th September 1733, he was brought up in the tenets of piety and (like young Schiller) conceived an extravagant admiration for Klopstock. These influences, co-operating with a boyish affection, pressed the precocious youth into composing poetry of a deeply religious strain. Bodmer (q.v.), recognising his talent, invited him (1752) to Zurich and inspired him to write Der geprüfte Abraham and similar books full of exaggerated sentimentality and religious mysticism. But the native bent of Wieland's disposition was towards the exactly opposite direction, and began to show itself even before he left (1760) Switzerland to take up an official position in his native town. During the next nine years he was chiefly influenced by French writers such as Voltaire and Rousseau and by the society of Count Stadion, a thorough man of the world, and of the beloved of his youth, Sophie von Laroche, now, however, married; in this period, besides making the first German translation of Shakespeare's plays (8 vols. 1762-66), he wrote the romances Agathon and Don Silvio von Rosalva, Die Grazien and other tales, the didactic poem Musarion, &c., books in which he advocates taking a full enjoyment of the good things of this life, sometimes in a sense that oversteps the bounds of decent license. The easy and elegant style, the grace and lightness of treatment, and doubtless the strong flavour of the current of French materialism that mark these productions made Wieland the most popular author of his day with fashionable society, who hitherto had read nothing but French literature. After holding for three years a professorship at Erfurt, Wieland was called to Weimar to train the sons of the grand-duchess, and there he spent most of the rest of his life, living on a good pension from the grand-duke and enjoying in his later years the friendship of Goethe and the acquaintance of Herder. He lived to a green old age and died, still hale and cheery of spirit, on 20th January 1813. The chief fruits of his literary activity during this Weimar period were the heroic poem Oberon, his best and most popular work, and that by which he is best remembered; the historical romances Die Abderiten, Aristipp, &c., the elegant satire of which is perhaps their principal charm; the graceful narratives in verse entitled Auserlesene Gedichte (1784-87); German versions of Lucian, Horace, and Cicero's Letters; and the editing of the magazines Die Teutsche Merkur (1773-89), Attisches Museum (1796-1801), and Neues Attische Museum (1802-10), all of which enjoyed considerable vogue in their day.
Wieland's Werke were published in 53 vols. in 1818-23, and in 40 vols. in 1879; editions of Ausgewählte Werke in 6 vols. in 1887 and in 6 vols. in 1889. See Life by Gruber (4 vols. 1827-28); books about him by Ofterding (1877), Büchner, Keil, Hirzel (1891); and collections of his Correspondence (1815-16, 1818, 1820).