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| Christoph Martin Wieland 1805. Portrait by Ferdinand Jagemann (©Hajotthu/Wikipedia) |
Reemtsma's Wieland biography is an opus magnum of 950 pages. It took Red Baron several weeks to finish the book. The book is a masterpiece of the German language. Once you have started reading, you cannot stop easily because of the book's content and style.
Reemtsma advocates "learning to read Wieland's work again and thus gaining a sense for the perception of specific beauties in his writings. In addition, it should show the singular role Wieland's work played in a particular epoch - so singular that the subtitle "The Invention of Modern German Literature" is probably justified."
It is impossible to describe Wieland's biography in one blog. So Red Baron will content himself pointing out a few highlights, quoting Reemtsma ("in quotes") and citing some of Wieland's original texts ("in italics"). Surprisingly, many of these texts are still relevant today. The snippets will underline the statement's validity that educated people in the 18th and 19th centuries were true cosmopolitans.
They communicated all over Europe with handwritten letters where languages were never a problem. All of them knew Latin, and some had studied Ancient Greek. Modern languages like French, English, or Italian were no hurdle. Today, we would say those people were gut vernetzt (well-networked). They profited from their European contacts in a win-win situation.
Wieland, professor in Erfurt
Let's start with Wieland's appointment as professor:
"On January 2, 1769, Wieland was informed by Elector Emmerich Josef from Mainz that he had been entrusted with 'the professorship of Philosophiae primarium at the University of Erffurth, with an annual salary of five hundred Reichsthaler in money, together with two Malter* of grain, two Malters of barley and four cords of wood.'"
*One Malter differed from place to place, but in the Erfurt region, it was 130 liters, corresponding to about one barrel.
Salaries were low, so additional goods in kind were common, although Wieland did not mention beer or wine.
"He disliked those studying* which is said to have moved Fichte somewhere to the sarcasm, 'Yes if they would' - i.e., study): 'Heaven forbid that my bones do not have to lie in the country where my fate has led me! What people, what minds, what manners, what crudeness, what lack of spirit, heart, and taste! I have to educate them to be human beings, these people!' But such complaints about student behavior could be found everywhere in Germany. Over time, everything settled down; he liked them, they liked him, and Wieland no longer despaired of his educational mission."
*In the 18th century, students were called 'those studying.' Nowadays, the term 'those studying' has turned into German gender madness. Because the form Studenten is masculine (female students are Studentinnen), the clumsy form for both genders, Studierende (those studying) is used
Anna Dorothea Hillenbrand
In his new position, Wieland had to be married. He writes, "So be it as it may, I have taken a wife, or rather, a little wife, for she is a small, though in my eyes quite a nice and amiable creature, whom I have had my parents and good friends, I don't really know how lay near to me. That's how it is; I'm satisfied, as are my fellow citizens, for they don't like when their superiors are unhitched."
The History of Agathon
Reemtsma states, "As a narrator, Wieland uses the prose forms of anecdote, fairy tale, story, novella, novel. His beginning is the stiff, didactic, highly overrated old-school Bildungsroman 'Agathon.' "
Still, "Lessing called Wieland's 'History of Agathon' the 'first novel for readers of classical taste.' With it, the novel became a generally recognized literary genre in Germany."
Agathon left its mark on German philosophy like no other, "The motto sapere aude (dare to be wise), which Kant declared to be the motto of the Enlightenment, comes from the novel. Agathon's motto is Quid Virtus, et quid Sapientia possit / utile proposuit nobis exemplum (What virtue and wisdom are capable of / a useful example has shown us)." Later, Wieland translated it as: "What virtue and what wisdom/ are capable of, Homer gives us/ a valuable example of in Ulysses. "
Julie Bondeli
Wieland met Julie Bondeli in Zürich. She was the only person and woman who could not only hold a candle to him in terms of knowledge but was superior.
"Julie Bondeli " put all the other women Wieland met in the shade. She was an intellectual for whom there was no place in the world where she was forced to live. She knew that. She described herself as a 'femme philosopher' and 'Plato de jupe.' She ironized the fact that people marveled at her by comparing her to a circus attraction, a kind of rhinoceros."
"She noted with some amusement that, unlike the compendiums0 of higher mathematics, stocking work had always remained a closed book to her."
Wieland's View About Women
"A woman who wishes to assert her independence must regard her gender in general as a hostile power ... with which she can never enter into a sincere peace without sacrificing her own welfare. This, it seems to me, is a necessary consequence of the undeniable fact that the female part of mankind is almost on the whole earth in a state of degradation and oppression, which can be founded on nothing in the world but the superiority of men in physical strength; since the advantages of the mind, in the exclusive possession of which they seek to place themselves, is not a natural prerogative of their gender, but one of the usurpations of which they have arrogated to themselves by virtue of their stronger bones. Among all peoples, the rougher the men, the more unhappy the condition of women is. Still, even among polished nations and among the most educated of all, women are treated by men in general either as slaves to their needs or as instruments of their pleasure. The most beautiful of them would be very stupid if she thought the least of the splendor or number of her pretended worshippers and slaves and could conceal from herself what the masters have done in the deceitful game that they play with the women's vanity and pleasure."
The Adventures of Don Sylvio
Once Wieland had finished the 'History of Agathon,' "he immediately begins to vary his style in the most charming way: the 'Don Sylvio' and the 'Danischmend' are already overflowing with the most spirited stylistic artistry."
"In the Adventures of Don Sylvio, Wieland has finally set himself free. Even Julie Bondeli, who was rather dissatisfied with the novel's jokes and quite unhappy with its slippery bits, stated what Friedrich Nietzsche would go on to say a hundred years later in a once-for-all dictum, 'No one writes such good German prose as Christoph Martin Wieland.'"
Shakespeare
When a Shakespeare translation is mentioned in Germany today, it is the one by Schlegel-Tiek. But before that, Wieland had already successfully translated Shakespeare's plays. In this process, Wieland, like Luther 250 years before, became a creator of German expressions. Nowadays, these "words are used as if they had always been there. The phrase Abschied nehmen (to take leave) or Steckenpferd (hobbyhorse) are of Wieland/Shakespearean origin - and many more.”
Here is more:
cold-hearted kaltherzig
crab-like krebsartig
declaration of war Kriegserklärung
everyday work Alltagsarbeit
death voice Totenstimme
grief-stricken kummerbeladen
heroic figure Heldengestalt
honey-dripping honigtriefend
hook-nosed hakennasig
infant age Kindesalter
lunch time Mittagsessenszeit
milkmaid Milchmädchen
pot-bellied schmerbäuchig
safety clause Sicherheitsklausel
sharp-tongued scharfzüngig
spleen Spleen
weary of life lebensüberdrüssig
widow maker Witwenmacher
winter tale Wintermärchen
Word breaker Wortbrecher
world literature Weltliteratur
world ruler Weltherrscher
The New Amadis
And in Der Neue Amadis, Wieland presents two more new and widely used German idioms.
"All the others (daughters and knights) are also narratively forced into pairs at the end, each pot gets its lid*, as the last line says."
*Jeder Topf bekommt seinen Deckel
"With the 'beautiful soul'*, which here forms the keystone of the cupid's construction, Wieland invents a German word for the Greek term 'καλοκἀγαθία' (the term for a Greek ideal of physical and spiritual excellence ('beauty and goodness')), which henceforth makes a career for itself."
*schöne Seele
A Nation Favored by the Muses
In his beginnings, "Wieland sees German literature as the whole world, and the whole of Germany saw it around, say, 1750. And now the whole world and the whole of Germany see it where the poets of the middle of the century wanted to see it, namely in terms of standard, sophistication, and poetic intelligence, where France, Italy, and England had long been."
This belated recognition was mainly due to Wieland, who proudly writes, "Especially since the French have for some time been convinced that we Germans, à l'heure qu'il est, are the only nation in Europe favored by the Muses."
Der Teutsche Merkur
Indeed, since 1773, Christoph Martin Wieland published and edited a literary magazine, Der Teutsche Merkur, modeled on the French magazine Mercure de France. Wieland "used the Merkur as an organ to advance the Enlightenment and to provide a platform to support literary taste."
"He is the stupendously hard-working publisher, editor, and author of the Teutsche Merkur, which is published unflinchingly quarterly and is the most highly regarded literary and political journal in Germany" that was also read all over Europe.
From 1790 to 1810, the journal was renamed Der Neue Teutsche Merkur.
"Wieland's work soon became tiresome and too much, 'But I too ... am unnoticedly being overtaken by the winter of life, and if I am less aware of it, and still have enough energy and activity to imagine myself younger than I am, the cause of this is probably merely my domestic bliss and the teeming, sprouting and life of so many young creatures around me.'" From 1798 to 1803, Wieland lived in his manor, Oßmannstedt, which he could buy from his royalties. Here, he enjoyed country life, raising animals and 13 children.
"In 1799, Wieland appointed Karl August Böttiger as editor in charge but remained publisher. He repeatedly considered discontinuing the journal, but at the end of 1810, the time had come: after 38 volumes, the last issue of what had long been Germany's most important literary and political journal was published."
Goethe
On Goethe, Reemtsma writes, "But did he always make the most of his talents? - Wieland is not alone in his doubts - to this day, people argue about the place Goethe gave to his speculations on the physics of colors and what rank posterity should give them. Wieland also takes careful note of this aspect, refrains from passing judgment, but asks about the public reaction '... so I ask you to tell me how Goethe's great work on light and colors, especially its polemical part, is regarded by the scholars in Leipzig. Newton's admirers will shake their heads violently and cringe. He has stung a great wasp's and hornet's nest."
Schiller
Schiller held the history chair at the University of Jena, and "German historiography only began with his 'History of the Thirty Years' War. This assessment is rarely found in self-thematizations of German historiography; in fact, not at all. Schiller's historical works are seen as a poet's excursions into a terrain that is basically foreign to him, or more precisely, a terrain that does not exist yet. If one were to take a closer look, one would be surprised to discover that he opened up this terrain."
Herder
"Herder came to Weimar because Wieland and Goethe sought him out. Herder stood for a new kind of philosophical theology or theological philosophy, a new idea of the connection between literature, poetry, and historical time."
"Pope Benedict XVI has always believed that the sola scriptura doctrine leads to philologists and historians being left to judge the truth of Scripture, ultimately leading to a hopeless secularization. This is precisely what Wieland welcomes, celebrating Herder's writing as a 'new transfiguration' of Christ and his 'new resurrection,' 'Everything, it seems to me, is ripe for Christianity to either cease to be visible in the world or to emerge victorious in a new, i.e., in its pure and true form.'"
"Through the falsification of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth (and the legend of his resurrection), Christianity had risen to become an initially popular and then dominant religion, and it was now time to uncover the ethical core again through philological and historical (and philosophical) criticism of revelation. Which, however, turns out to be astonishingly trivial: 'Children, love one another,' says the old Johannes in Lessing's work - and that's all he needs, he says."
Red Baron listens to The Beatles.
Kant
"If a philosophical direction develops a special language, then it misses what, in Wieland's eyes, constitutes or should constitute philosophy: To be a doctrine of right living, for such a doctrine must necessarily include not speaking elite jargon, 'Him I accept, but with his philosophical Rothwälsch (thieve's cant), which is neither German, nor can it be translated into any language without destroying it, Never!'"
Wieland should not complain here. After all, he was spared Heidecker.
Seume
" Wieland called Johann Gottfried Seume a 'true cynic,' and such a person was the 'most genuine man and the true sage ... Ancient Greece had barely half a dozen of them within 500 years, and in our days Seume is the only one I at least know.'"
About the German Language and Printing
"The prejudice that the German language was 'less poetic' due to its lack of vowels (compared to Italian or French) was for a long time something of a poetological certainty, which Wieland felt was his duty to refute. An open-minded reader would have found 'the language, which Emperor Charles the Fifth (certainly not a German, although king in Germania) only wanted to neigh with his horse, is to a very high degree musical if he had been able to read and fully feel the best songs of Hagedorn, Gleim, Utz, Weisse, Jakobi, Bürger, Hölthy and others.'"
"Wieland always spoke out against the scarification of German through eradicating foreign words. Wieland polemicized against a style of language and thus of thought to which he also had other objections."
"Sometimes Wieland advocated using the Fraktur (Gothic) typeface when he wrote to one of his printers: 'I am delighted that you also favor German letters. I will not be talked out of the fact that the German letters are more appropriate to our national character and much more pleasing to the eye than the Latin ones. 'Probably because of his foreign readers, he refrained from printing his Sämmtliche Werke in Fraktur."
Parapsychology
"Magnetization was in vogue. Reports of spiritual phenomena were read with pleasure and belief. Mischief and seriousness mingled. This was funny and disturbing. Lavater measured skull shapes, Goethe tried to refute Newton and show that light did not 'refract' in the prism, Swedenborg had made proselytes, and Kant did not think it idle to exercise his pen here, in 1766 his 'Dreams of a Visionary' appeared, in which he speaks of 'hypochondriacal vapors, old wives' tales, and monastic miracles.' In 1781, Wieland wrote 'On people's tendency to believe in magic and ghostly apparitions' in the Merkur and included this essay in his Sämmtliche Werke."
"This tendency of the time could be viewed with political concern; one thinks of Schiller's 'Geisterseher,' of Goethe's 'Der Groß Cophta,' which was dedicated to the machinations of Cagliostro and the unfortunate "Affair of the Diamond Necklace" (in which Cagliostro was involved), a dreary scam."
Vaccination
"An interesting topic that takes up quite a bit of space in Wieland's correspondence is inoculation. In 1782, Wieland had his children vaccinated against smallpox by the physician Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, and later his grandchildren were also vaccinated."
"In 1788, he advised his son-in-law Reinhold, 'We cannot disapprove of your concern about the recommended inoculation of Caroline: However, since the danger of natural smallpox, from which she cannot be protected in any other way than by inoculation, is incomparably greater,' he should have the vaccination carried out."
"The problem, which was discussed in Germany in 2021/22 under the term vaccination breakthrough, was already dealt with in June and December 1775 in the Teutscher Merkur under the title 'Concerning the case of natural smallpox returning after previous inoculation.'"
Wieland's Concerns About Democracy
"Wieland's novel Aristipp reflects his skepticism about the idea that the creation of constitutions is essential. Without capable and responsible politicians, the best constitution is useless - (In his Aristipp). Cyrene is lucky to be governed by the best politicians in the city at the moment, but if these times pass, the constitution, although cleverly devised, will collapse. The people, Wieland has reasoning his Aristipp, cannot govern themselves, but are governed by people who are usually just as incapable of doing so."
"The trial and condemnation of Socrates, of which Aristipp learns in a letter, are for him, however, proof of the unsuitability of democracy as a form of government: demagogues could incite a popular or, in this case, a judicial assembly to the greatest follies. Aristipp takes the statement by Dionys, the dictator of Syracuse - Socrates had nothing to fear from him and would have had a peaceful old age - as an opportunity to renew his earlier praise of Dionys' wisdom and energy - if it came down to it, he would make Dionys the autocrat of all Greece. Aristipp undoubtedly shares his aversion to plebiscitary democracies with his 'author' Wieland."
Wieland on the French Revolution
Reemtsma starts by quoting David Hume, who "once answered the question of why people tolerate authorities that (obviously) govern, or oppress them badly: because putting up with them (obviously) seems more advantageous than rebelling against them."
Now, in 1789, taking the 13 States of America as a role model, the people of France rebel against their authorities such that Wieland writes, "I abandon myself ... to the sweet feeling of joy which must refresh the heart of every citizen of the world who participates in the welfare of mankind at the thought of having lived to this epoch, when the most cultivated nation of Europe gives the world the great example of legislation which, founded solely and exclusively on human rights and true national interest, is always the clear expression of reason in all its parts and articles ...".
However, he added an admonition: "Whatever constitution is enacted, it should consider the following principles of law and state philosophy: Separation of powers, guarantee of individual property, general taxation, and acceptance that there are irrevocable differences in status."
"The Republic or death and destruction! was and is the watchword of the Jacobins and Sankülots."
The party was over. After the excesses in France, Wieland resigned, "Mankind has made an 'instructive experiment at the expense of the French, which will at least teach all other peoples that any still-suffering state is infinitely better than a revolution without a head, without a plan, without means, without an end, in a word, without reason.'"
"Had it stood with me, neither the guilty nor the innocent would certainly have been hanged on lampposts without justice and judgment, no man's house would have been plundered, no good nobleman's or even a peasant oppressor's castle would have been set on fire, and the good King Louis XVI's Majesty would have been hounded to Paris in a far more mannerly way than unfortunately happened on October 6 of last year (1791) ... But it is, nevertheless, absolutely impossible for me to be less convinced, for the sake of all those real and fictitious atrocities of which the Parisian mob ... may have been guilty in the course of the last ten months, that the Revolution was a necessary and salutary work, or rather the only means of saving and restoring the nation and, in all probability, of making it happier than any other has ever been."
Buonaparte
In a fictitious dialog, Wieland has one participant suggest a dictator for the revolution-shaken France:
"It's - don't get too excited! - it is - because they no longer want a king" and "their constitution of the year 1795, which after the tremendous rupture it received on the 18th of Fructidor* cannot last much longer anyway, the better to throw itself into the fire and elect a dictator."
*Meant is the aborted coup d'état of 18 Fructidor in the Year V (September 4, 1797)
"For many reasons, however, he must not be a true Frenchman, at least not from an old and well-known family, and if he even had a foreign name, it would be all the better ... The most extraordinary thing about the matter is that you do not need to look for this man, for he has already been found by a stroke of luck, which may well be called unique in its kind."
"Buonaparte, then?"
"Buonaparte, dictator of the great Nation!"
Wieland's prediction had reactions.
"On January 25, 1800, an article entitled 'Prediction concerning Buonaparte' appeared in the St. James Chronicle. It stated that, in all probability, the article in the Merkur, penned by a certain Weiland (!!), had been inspired by 'the Illuminati, with the intention of ... making their hero acceptable to the French nation. All this cannot leave the slightest doubt,' and Weiland's dialog was a 'secret, but well-understood code by all adepts of this horrid system.'"
Freedom of the Press
"In the Teutscher Merkur of September 1785, Wieland summarized his credo: 'Freedom of the press is the concern and interest of the whole human race. It is mainly to this freedom that we owe the present degree of enlightenment, culture, and refinement of which our Europe can boast. Rob us of this freedom, and the light which we now enjoy will soon disappear again; ignorance will soon degenerate into stupidity, and stupidity will again abandon us to superstition and tyrannical despotism.'"
The Meeting with Napoleon at Weimar
Seume
" Wieland called Johann Gottfried Seume a 'true cynic,' and such a person was the 'most genuine man and the true sage ... Ancient Greece had barely half a dozen of them within 500 years, and in our days Seume is the only one I at least know.'"
About the German Language and Printing
"The prejudice that the German language was 'less poetic' due to its lack of vowels (compared to Italian or French) was for a long time something of a poetological certainty, which Wieland felt was his duty to refute. An open-minded reader would have found 'the language, which Emperor Charles the Fifth (certainly not a German, although king in Germania) only wanted to neigh with his horse, is to a very high degree musical if he had been able to read and fully feel the best songs of Hagedorn, Gleim, Utz, Weisse, Jakobi, Bürger, Hölthy and others.'"
"Wieland always spoke out against the scarification of German through eradicating foreign words. Wieland polemicized against a style of language and thus of thought to which he also had other objections."
"Sometimes Wieland advocated using the Fraktur (Gothic) typeface when he wrote to one of his printers: 'I am delighted that you also favor German letters. I will not be talked out of the fact that the German letters are more appropriate to our national character and much more pleasing to the eye than the Latin ones. 'Probably because of his foreign readers, he refrained from printing his Sämmtliche Werke in Fraktur."
Parapsychology
"Magnetization was in vogue. Reports of spiritual phenomena were read with pleasure and belief. Mischief and seriousness mingled. This was funny and disturbing. Lavater measured skull shapes, Goethe tried to refute Newton and show that light did not 'refract' in the prism, Swedenborg had made proselytes, and Kant did not think it idle to exercise his pen here, in 1766 his 'Dreams of a Visionary' appeared, in which he speaks of 'hypochondriacal vapors, old wives' tales, and monastic miracles.' In 1781, Wieland wrote 'On people's tendency to believe in magic and ghostly apparitions' in the Merkur and included this essay in his Sämmtliche Werke."
"This tendency of the time could be viewed with political concern; one thinks of Schiller's 'Geisterseher,' of Goethe's 'Der Groß Cophta,' which was dedicated to the machinations of Cagliostro and the unfortunate "Affair of the Diamond Necklace" (in which Cagliostro was involved), a dreary scam."
Vaccination
"An interesting topic that takes up quite a bit of space in Wieland's correspondence is inoculation. In 1782, Wieland had his children vaccinated against smallpox by the physician Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, and later his grandchildren were also vaccinated."
"In 1788, he advised his son-in-law Reinhold, 'We cannot disapprove of your concern about the recommended inoculation of Caroline: However, since the danger of natural smallpox, from which she cannot be protected in any other way than by inoculation, is incomparably greater,' he should have the vaccination carried out."
"The problem, which was discussed in Germany in 2021/22 under the term vaccination breakthrough, was already dealt with in June and December 1775 in the Teutscher Merkur under the title 'Concerning the case of natural smallpox returning after previous inoculation.'"
Wieland's Concerns About Democracy
"Wieland's novel Aristipp reflects his skepticism about the idea that the creation of constitutions is essential. Without capable and responsible politicians, the best constitution is useless - (In his Aristipp). Cyrene is lucky to be governed by the best politicians in the city at the moment, but if these times pass, the constitution, although cleverly devised, will collapse. The people, Wieland has reasoning his Aristipp, cannot govern themselves, but are governed by people who are usually just as incapable of doing so."
"The trial and condemnation of Socrates, of which Aristipp learns in a letter, are for him, however, proof of the unsuitability of democracy as a form of government: demagogues could incite a popular or, in this case, a judicial assembly to the greatest follies. Aristipp takes the statement by Dionys, the dictator of Syracuse - Socrates had nothing to fear from him and would have had a peaceful old age - as an opportunity to renew his earlier praise of Dionys' wisdom and energy - if it came down to it, he would make Dionys the autocrat of all Greece. Aristipp undoubtedly shares his aversion to plebiscitary democracies with his 'author' Wieland."
Wieland on the French Revolution
Reemtsma starts by quoting David Hume, who "once answered the question of why people tolerate authorities that (obviously) govern, or oppress them badly: because putting up with them (obviously) seems more advantageous than rebelling against them."
Now, in 1789, taking the 13 States of America as a role model, the people of France rebel against their authorities such that Wieland writes, "I abandon myself ... to the sweet feeling of joy which must refresh the heart of every citizen of the world who participates in the welfare of mankind at the thought of having lived to this epoch, when the most cultivated nation of Europe gives the world the great example of legislation which, founded solely and exclusively on human rights and true national interest, is always the clear expression of reason in all its parts and articles ...".
However, he added an admonition: "Whatever constitution is enacted, it should consider the following principles of law and state philosophy: Separation of powers, guarantee of individual property, general taxation, and acceptance that there are irrevocable differences in status."
"The Republic or death and destruction! was and is the watchword of the Jacobins and Sankülots."
The party was over. After the excesses in France, Wieland resigned, "Mankind has made an 'instructive experiment at the expense of the French, which will at least teach all other peoples that any still-suffering state is infinitely better than a revolution without a head, without a plan, without means, without an end, in a word, without reason.'"
"Had it stood with me, neither the guilty nor the innocent would certainly have been hanged on lampposts without justice and judgment, no man's house would have been plundered, no good nobleman's or even a peasant oppressor's castle would have been set on fire, and the good King Louis XVI's Majesty would have been hounded to Paris in a far more mannerly way than unfortunately happened on October 6 of last year (1791) ... But it is, nevertheless, absolutely impossible for me to be less convinced, for the sake of all those real and fictitious atrocities of which the Parisian mob ... may have been guilty in the course of the last ten months, that the Revolution was a necessary and salutary work, or rather the only means of saving and restoring the nation and, in all probability, of making it happier than any other has ever been."
Buonaparte
In a fictitious dialog, Wieland has one participant suggest a dictator for the revolution-shaken France:
"It's - don't get too excited! - it is - because they no longer want a king" and "their constitution of the year 1795, which after the tremendous rupture it received on the 18th of Fructidor* cannot last much longer anyway, the better to throw itself into the fire and elect a dictator."
*Meant is the aborted coup d'état of 18 Fructidor in the Year V (September 4, 1797)
"For many reasons, however, he must not be a true Frenchman, at least not from an old and well-known family, and if he even had a foreign name, it would be all the better ... The most extraordinary thing about the matter is that you do not need to look for this man, for he has already been found by a stroke of luck, which may well be called unique in its kind."
"Buonaparte, then?"
"Buonaparte, dictator of the great Nation!"
Wieland's prediction had reactions.
"On January 25, 1800, an article entitled 'Prediction concerning Buonaparte' appeared in the St. James Chronicle. It stated that, in all probability, the article in the Merkur, penned by a certain Weiland (!!), had been inspired by 'the Illuminati, with the intention of ... making their hero acceptable to the French nation. All this cannot leave the slightest doubt,' and Weiland's dialog was a 'secret, but well-understood code by all adepts of this horrid system.'"
Freedom of the Press
"In the Teutscher Merkur of September 1785, Wieland summarized his credo: 'Freedom of the press is the concern and interest of the whole human race. It is mainly to this freedom that we owe the present degree of enlightenment, culture, and refinement of which our Europe can boast. Rob us of this freedom, and the light which we now enjoy will soon disappear again; ignorance will soon degenerate into stupidity, and stupidity will again abandon us to superstition and tyrannical despotism.'"
The Meeting with Napoleon at Weimar
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| Napoleon, who he may have looked according to AI (©Facebook) |
"But Napoleon asked for me twice and seemed surprised not to see me at the ball, as he had seen me in the play in a box quite close to his seat - the Duchess let me know this pp., and now there was no other advice than to put me in the court carriage that was sent to me and - in my usual accouterment, that is a calotte on my head, unpowdered without a sword, and in cloth boots (decently costumed, by the way) to appear in the dance hall."
When Wieland appeared, Napoleon immediately took him under his wing, probably also because Wieland spoke passable French.
"Today's play had turned the conversation to Julius Caesar, and Napoleon declared him to be one of the greatest minds in the whole history of the world; indeed, he added, he would be the greatest without exception if he had not made a single but quite unforgivable mistake. I pondered in vain what that mistake might have been but did not want to ask; Napoleon, however, who could read the question in my eyes, immediately continued, 'You want to know this mistake? Caesar had long known the people who had put him on the side, and so he should have put them on the side. - If Napoleon had been able to read my soul, he would have read, You will not let yourself be guilty of this mistake!" History reports that Napoleon was not squeamish when it came to eliminating his real or supposed opponents.
"Wieland was very annoyed by the copperplate engraving of the encounter in the Weimar Palace. He called it a 'disgraceful bungling of a vivid depiction of this unfortunate Napoleon and Wieland! ... as if it had been painstakingly designed to ridicule the Emperor and myself - me, who stands opposite the Emperor without a hat, in a white gillet and in gaiters, and makes a gesticulation with both hands as if I had much to object to what he says. The bungler turns the Emperor into a good-natured, invalid sergeant, prating of his great deeds, who cuts such a miserable, pompous figure even to the poor pedant that one does not know whether to laugh or cry.'"
Two years later, Napoleon awarded Wieland the Order of the Legion of Honor First Class and Tsar Alexander the Order of St. Anne Second Class at the meeting of princes in Erfurt. His reaction was, "Why all this? I would have preferred a modest pension."
Wieland on Getting Old
"About a year before his death, in February 1812, Wieland writes an astonishing letter: 'In such a protracted, though not very boring life as mine, nothing is more natural than that of all the millions of strings to which we cling in life, one after the other breaks without being noticed, and so when we linger too long, it finally comes to pass that we cling to almost nothing, desire little or nothing, hope even less, and generally regard ourselves as people from another world, who have as much as nothing in common with the present one, whose role has been played out, and who could therefore go their way without the world becoming aware of their disappearance. But for my part, when I listen to myself as quietly as possible, I must either be organized differently from others, or I could take it as a sign that I am still destined to experience more. The truth about me is that, although countless threads on which I was hanging ... were torn off sooner or later, new ones are always spinning up, which, just as unnoticed, at least up to a certain point, involve me in life and prevent me from ever becoming indifferent to it.'"
Red Baron somehow goes through the same experience but would like to add that these new threads are thinner than the initial ones.
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