Christoph Wieland nsIn human chemistry, Christoph Wieland (1733-1813) was a German poet and writer, a Cattell 1000 (#288), a neighbor of German polymath Johann Goethe, noted for his peculiar adversarial relationship to Goethe.

Childish nonsense
Wieland famously sent a letter—which he suggested should be burned after it is read—in 1810 to his close friend German philologist and archeologist Karl Böttiger, in commentary on Goethe’s new 1809 novella Elective Affinities, stating that: [1]

“To all rational readers, the use of the chemical theory [in Elective Affinities] is nonsense and childish fooling around.”

Wieland seemed to consider Goethe's novella to be a sort of anathema, calling it a "truly horrible work", supposedly objecting to the radicalness of its Christianity. [2]

Read three times
It was to Wieland, in circa Nov 1809, that Goethe famously, commented that, to be understood properly, it must be read three times. [3]

Goethe | Soul theory
See main: Goethe on the soul
It was on the return from Wieland's funeral that Goethe began to discuss speculative ideas about the soul in terms of Aristotle's entelechy and Gottfried Leibniz's monad theory, among other concepts.

References
1. (a) Wieland, Christoph Martin. (1810). "Letter to Karl August Böttiger" July 16. Weimar.
(b) Tantillo, Astrida O. (2001). Goethe's Elective Affinities and the Critics (pg. 9-10). Camden House.
2. Goethe, Johann and Lange, Victor. (1990). The Sufferings of Young Werther; and Elective Affinities, Vol. 19 of the German Library. (pg. 125). Continuum.
3. Winkelman, John. (1987). Goethe’s Elective Affinities: an Interpretation (pg. 30). P. Lang.

External links
Christoph Wieland – Wikipedia.

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