Christian Felix Weiße

Christian Felix Weiße (1726–1804) was a German writer and pedagogue. Weiße was among the leading representatives of the Enlightenment in Germany and is regarded as the founder of German children's literature.

Weiße was born as twin on 28 January 1726 in Annaberg in the Ore Mountains as the son of Christian Heinrich Weiße and his wife, Christian Elisabeth. His father was rector at a Latin school and teacher for oriental and modern European languages. When Weiße was one year old, the family moved to Altenburg, Thuringia, 45 km south of Leipzig, where he then attended the Gymnasium and made his first attempts at writing poetry. His father had died in 1730.

His family moved then to Leipzig, where he studied philology and theology from 1745 until 1750 at the University of Leipzig. During this time, he became acquainted with Christian Fürchtegott Gellert, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Friederike Caroline Neuber, Gottlieb Rabener and Ewald Christian von Kleist.

After he finished his studies, Weiße became a private tutor to the Count Geyersberg, also a student in Leipzig. Friedrich Nicolai asked Weiße in 1759 to become editor of the magazine Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften (Library of the Beautiful Sciences) which Nicolai had founded two years before; Weiße published this magazine and its successor until 1788. The same year, 1759, Weiße travelled to Paris; on his return, he relinquished the tutur position and became social companion to Count Schulenburg on the count's in Burgscheidungen.

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