Wielands Nachlass

When Christoph Martin Wieland died in January 1813 at the age of almost 80, he left behind an extensive inheritance in addition to his great work as a poet, translator, and journalist: a library of almost 4,000 volumes, letters and manuscripts, art objects and other valuables, cash and investments, furniture and clothing, crockery, and kitchen utensils. This estate and its elaborate regulation are comprehensively documented here for the first time. Based on mostly unknown sources (such as inventories, auction records, and trial records), transcribed here in detail, the importance of this bequest is appreciated in all its biographical, socio-historical, and legal-historical references. This provides in-depth insights into the life of the late Wieland and at the same time exemplary insights into the social status of one of the most important poets of Weimar Classicism.