Christoph Martin Wieland

Christoph Martin Wieland (Oberholzheim, near Biberach, 1733 – Weimar, 1813) was one of the most prominent literary figures of Enlightenment Germany and an author whose impact also reached musical theatre with considerable force. Although his name is usually associated with the novel and poetry, his work enjoyed notable resonance in opera and the singspiel, the sung genre in the German language that was consolidating itself in those years.

He studied law at Tübingen and afterwards travelled to Zurich. After a period as a private tutor, he returned to his native region in 1760. His novel Geschichte des Agathon, published between 1766 and 1767, set in the Greek world and notable for its psychological acuity, earned him a chair in philosophy at Erfurt. In 1772 he moved to Weimar to take charge of the education of the young dukes. A year later he founded the journal Der teutsche Merkur, inspired by the Mercure de France, through which he followed with keen interest the effort to create a national German singspiel, to which he devoted several essays.

His libretto for Schweitzer's Alceste, premiered in Weimar in 1773, holds a worthy place in the history of German opera, although other texts he wrote for the same composer have a more limited reach, and some of his works for music are of interest chiefly as documentary material. His most significant contribution to music is, however, the anthology Dschinnistan (Winterthur, 1786–1789), partly original and partly translated or adapted, whose tales served as the basis for Mozart's The Magic Flute and other operas and singspiels. After a period of retirement between 1797 and 1803 he returned to Weimar, and after Schiller's death in 1805 he was regarded as the most important German writer after Goethe.