‘Ilmenau’, a poem written by Goethe in 1783, and published in 1815. Ilmenau, some 25 miles south-west of Weimar, was the scene of hunting expeditions of Duke Karl August, on which Goethe accompanied him, and the date beneath the title, 3 September 1783, is the Duke's twenty-sixth birthday. The poem, written partly in couplets and partly in alternately rhyming groups of four lines, combines several elements: a sense of the healing power of nature, a friendly caricature of court figures (Knebel and Seckendorff), a retrospect of Goethe's life, a tribute to the Duke, and a solemn word on a ruler's responsibilities. The unifying factor in this conglomerate poem is the stable and steady gaze of the poet, which makes each point of comment a part of his own experience.

The Oxford Companion to German Literature. Copyright © 1976, 1986, 1997, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.