683 



WIDNMANN, MAX. 



WIELAND, CHUISTOPH MARTIN. 



634 



have been a translation into French from the German of the travels 

 into Muscovy, Tartary, and Persia of Adam Olearius, ' Relation du 

 Voyage de Moscovie,' &c., which appeared at Paris, in 4to, in 1656, 

 again at Paris, in 2 vols. 4 to, in 1659, and in a third edition, which ia 

 by far the best, at Amsterdam, in folio, in 1726. This was followed 

 by a translation into French from the Spanish of the embassy of 

 Garcias de Silva into Persia, ' L'Ambassade de D. Garcias de Silva 

 Figueroaen Perse,' &c., Paris, 4 to, 1667. After his imprisonment at 

 the Hague he published at Cologne, in 12mo, a defence of himself 

 under the title of ' Memoires touchant les Ambassadeurs, &c. par 

 L. M. P." (meaning, it seems, ' Le Ministre Prisonnier '). But his two 

 principal works are his treatise entitled ' L'Ambassadeur et ses Fonc- 

 tions,' first published at the Hague in 2 vols. 4to, in 1681, and sub- 

 sequently at Amsterdam, in 1724, in 1733, and in 1736; and his 

 ' Histoire des Provinces Unies,' or ' History of the United Provinces 

 from the peace of Munster,' which he began to write on his return to 

 Holland, in 1659, tinder the inspection of De Witt. He had both 

 written and printed a considerable portion of this latter work when he 

 was thrown iuto prison in 1676 ; but it was first published in a folio 

 volume at the Hague, in 1719. Another posthumous work of De 

 Wicquefort, entitled ' Mdmoirea sur le Rang et la Prese"ance entre 

 les Souverains de 1' Europe,' was published at Amsterdam, in 4to, 

 iu 1746. 



* WIDNMANN, MAX, professor of sculpture in the Royal Academy 

 of Art at Munich, was born in 1812, at Eichstadt in Bavaria; received 

 his early education iu the gymnasium of that town ; and while still a 

 youth, entered as a student in the Royal Academy at Munich. There 

 he studied sculpture under Schwanthaler, whose assistant he became ; 

 but he also produced several independent works among them a 

 statue of 'Ajax,' and a group of ' Samson and Delilah.' In 1836 he 

 went to Rome, where he remained three years, and whilst there pro- 

 duced his Shield of Hercules, from the description of Hesiod a 

 work which gained him a high reputation. After his return to Munich, 

 he executed among other things a group of ' Apollo and Coronis ;' 

 several bas-reliefs : a marble statue of the statesman Johann Von 

 Miiudel ; and one of General Von Heydeck ; as well as several busts 

 for the Ruhmershalle at Munich ; and he steadily rose to be one of the 

 first artists in the German metropolis of art. On the death of Schwan- 

 thaler, in 1848, he was accordingly appointed to succeed him as pro- 

 fessor of sculpture in the Academy. He has since produced, among 

 other works, colossal statues of the musical composers, Orlando di 

 Lasso and Gluck, for the Odeon ; of Rauch in classic costume for the 

 Glyptothek ; and the marble group of ' A Hunter defending his Family 

 from the attack of a Panther' (1851) : of this group, and of his Shield 

 of Hercules, there are casts in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. 



W1EBEKING, CARL FRIEDRICH, an eminent practical enginear 

 and writer on hydraulic and civil architecture, was born at Wolliu in 

 Pomerania, in 1762. He had applied himself so curly and so earnestly 

 to the practical study of topography, that when only seventeen he was 

 entrusted with the task of making a statistical survey or chart of the 

 duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, which was engraved on niue sheets. 

 His success in this, his first undertaking of the kind, caused him to be 

 employed almost immediately afterwards by the Prussian government 

 to make a similar survey of Pomerania between Belgard and Zamow. 

 From about 1784 to 1788 he was engaged in making similar surveys 

 of their territories for the dukes of Gotha and Weimar and the rulers 

 of some other German states ; during which period he also devoted 

 a considerable portion of his time each winter to the study of archi- 

 tecture, aa well civil and military as hydraulic and engineering. In 

 1788 he was appointed engineer in the service of the duchy of Berg, 

 and in 1792 he first appeared before the public as a writer on pro- 

 fessional and scientific subjects, in a work entitled ' Ueber Topogra- 

 phische Charten,' and his 'Beitriige, c.,' or ' Contributions to Practical 

 Hydraulic Architecture and Machinery.' From this time he was 

 chiefly occupied for many years upon his large work, ' Wasser- 

 baukunst,' to collect materials and information for which he visited 

 Holland, and afterwards France, the latter country together with his 

 father-in-law, Oberbaurath Rousseau, the results of which scientific 

 journey are given in the third and fourth volumes of the first edition, 

 which was brought out in five volumes, from 1798 to 1805. This 

 work obtained for him a high reputation not unattended with other 

 advantage.*, for in 1802 his services were engaged by the Austrian 

 government, with an accession to his income of 2000 florins as a salary, 

 and he was employed to inspect the ports and harbours of Trieste, 

 Venice, Fiurne, and other places within the Austrian-Italian territory. 

 He was thus occupied till about 1805, when he was invited to Bavaria, 

 and there became chief engineer and inspector of roads and canals, 

 which appointment he continued to hold till 1818, when he retired 

 upon a pension. While actively engaged in his extensive professional 

 duties, he had not neglected his literary occupations, one of which was 

 a new edition of his ' Wasaerbaukunst ;' and now that he was released 

 from the former, he applied himself diligently to his pen, and under- 

 took another very extensive work of a far more generally interesting 

 and popular character than the former, namely, his ' Theoretisch- 

 practische Biirgerliche Baukunde,' a general course of civil archi- 

 tecture and its history, in 4 vols. 4to, with a very large folio atlas of 

 plates, 1821-6. This work is certainly a very valuable contribution to 

 architectural study, if only on account of the fund of fresh information 



it supplies relative to the architecture of Germany, Holland, Poland, 

 Russia, and some other parts of Europe, in regard to which scarcely 

 anything can be gathered from any other general collection of the 

 kind. But the Atlas is of an inconveniently large size, and the plates 

 themselves are inferior specimens of architectural drawing, being 

 executed for the greater part in a coarse, loose, and untrustworthy 

 style. Very great allowance however is to be made for the defects 

 and deficiencies of a work so comprehensive in its plan as to exceed 

 the means of a single individual, however well qualified or however 

 industrious. 



As to Wiebeking's own talents in architecture, it does not appear 

 that he ever executed or designed any building actually erected, a 

 circumstance not particularly to be regretted if we may judge of what 

 he would have done from the specimens which he has given us in the 

 work we have just been speaking of. Besides the works already 

 mentioned, he published several others, his ' Theoretisch-practische 

 Strassenbaukunde,' 1808, and, so late as 1840, one entitled 'An-ily.se 

 Historique et Raisonne'e des Mouumens de 1'Antiquite* ; des Editices 

 les plus remarquables du Moyen Age, &c.' and dedicated to Queen 

 Victoria of England. The Chevalier von Wiebeking, as he was usually 

 called, being knight of several German and foreign orders, as well as 

 member of nearly all the principal academies and learned societies in 

 Europe, died at Munich, May 29th 1842, in his eighty-first year, with- 

 out having experienced much previous indisposition or the infirmities 

 usually attending such advanced age. 



W1ELAND, CHRISTOPH MARTIN, was born on the 5th of Sep- 

 tember} 1733, at Oberholzheim, a village in the neighbourhood of 

 Biberach in Suabia, where his father was pastor. Old Wieland, who 

 belonged to the Pietistic party of German Protestants, was well 

 acquainted with the ancient languages, and a good philosopher of the 

 school of Christian Wolf., From Oberholzeim he was transferred 

 soon after the birth of his son to Biberach, where ha died at an 

 advanced age as senior of the Protestant ministry of the place. The 

 mother of Wieland was, according to his own description, a model of 

 a pious, domestic, and affectionate woman. The influence of such 

 parents is visible more or less throughout the life of Wielaud, and 

 under their direction his talents were awakened at an unusually early 

 age. In his seventh year he read Cornelius Nepos with great facility, 

 aud began to learn Greek ; in his eleventh year he attempted to write 

 Latin poetry, aud in his twelfth he wrote a German epic on the 

 destruction of Jerusalem. The early years of his life were passed 

 happily iu his father's house. In his fourteenth year his father sent 

 him to the school of Klosterbergen, near Magdeburg, where he paid 

 great attention to the ancient languages. Xenophon, especially the 

 ' Cyropaedia,' with its beautiful episode of Araspes and Pauthea, and 

 the ' Memorabilia ' of Socrates, which he used to call the Gospel of 

 the Greeks, made the deepest impression upon him. During this 

 period he also read with great zeal the German translations of Steele, 

 Addison, and Shaftesbury, and the original works of Voltaire, D'Argens, 

 La Metrie, and others, for he had learned French in a very short time 

 without a master. His French reading tended to destroy his religious 

 belief, and with it his .peace of mind. One of his teachers discovered 

 the change which had taken place, and succeeded in calming the 

 struggle which was going on in his mind ; but his health was already 

 much impaired by it. When he had attained his sixteenth year, his 

 father sent him to reside with a relation, a physician at Erfurt, for 

 the recovery of his health, and to prepare himself for the university. 



After having spent eighteen months at Erfurt, a residence which, 

 as he himself says, was more useful than agreeable, he returned, iu 

 the summer of 1750, to his parents at Biberach, where he passed six 

 months, the happiest of his whole life for it was the period of his 

 first love for a cousin, Sophia von Gutermann, who afterwards became 

 known as a writer under the name of Sophia de Laroche. The attach- 

 ment to her and her conversation had an extraordinary influence upon 

 Wieland : he describes it as having made him an enthusiast for reli- 

 gion and everything that was good and virtuous. It was during a 

 conservation with her that he conceived the idr a of a didactic poetn 

 ' On the Nature of Things, or the most perfect World ' (' Ueber die 

 Natur der Dinge, oder die vollkommenste Welt'). This poem, 

 although Wieland afterwards wished to suppress it, as a juvenile pro- 

 duction, excited among the leading men in matters of taste a very 

 favourable opinion of the young author's talents. In the autumn of 

 1750 Wieland went to the university of Tubingen, professedly to study 

 the law, but he occupied himself chiefly with classical literature, 

 philosophy, and modern poetry, and devoted to his professional study 

 only as much attention as was necessary to enable him to pass his 

 examination. Socrates appeared to him the beau iddal of a man, and 

 he resolved to follow his example. De Bar's ' Epitres Diverses,' which 

 then caused a great sensation in Germany, induced Wieland to write 

 his ten moral epistles ('Zelm Moralische Briefe,' Tubingen, 1751), 

 which were addressed to Sophia. These letters, which are distin- 

 guished for humour and delicacy of feeling, are the best picture of 

 the s4ate of his mind at that time. Another didactic poem, the ' Anti- 

 Ovid,' the production of a few days, is greatly inferior to his moral 

 letters. While at the university Wieland showed little inclination to 

 form friendships with the young men of his own age : his great desire 

 was to become acquainted with the chief literary men, and to join 

 them in their labours for improving the national taste. With this 



