Christoph Martin Wieland

Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–1813) was a German poet, writer and translator of the Enlightenment. He was born on 5 September 1733 in Oberholzheim near Biberach an der Riss and died on 20 January 1813 in Weimar. Wieland wrote novels, satires, plays and verse narratives, and addressed philosophical, political, social and aesthetic questions in essays and articles. He edited the journal Der Teutsche Merkur, which played an important role in the intellectual life of its time, and translated works by Shakespeare into German. He is regarded as an important prose writer of the German Enlightenment and one of the forerunners of Weimar Classicism.