Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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(b Frankfurt, 28 Aug 1749; d Weimar, 22 March 1832). German writer and poet. He served at the Weimar court from 1775. One of the seminal figures of world literature, he intended many of his writings for music. His greatest work, Faust, envisages musical sections, and though never set complete, inspired compositions by Mendelssohn, Schumann, Berlioz, Liszt, Gounod, Mahler and others. Beethoven wrote music for the tragedy Egmont. Goethe wrote several Singspiel texts, such as Claudine von Villa Bella (later set by Schubert), and his poetry dominated German song from Schubert (e.g. Erlkönig) to Wolf - though he himself preferred simple settings, like Zelter's or Reichardt's, to ones as elaborate as Schubert's.

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The German poet, dramatist, novelist, and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), who embraced many fields of human endeavor, ranks as the greatest of all German poets. Of all modern men of genius, Goethe is the most universal.

The many-sided activities of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe stand as a tribute to the greatness of his mind and his personality. Napoleon I's oft-quoted remark about Goethe, made after their meeting at Erfurt - "Voilàun homme!" (There's a man!) - reflects later humanity's judgment of Goethe's genius. Not only, however, does Goethe rank with Homer, Dante Alighieri, and William Shakespeare as a supreme creator, but also in his life itself - incredibly long, rich, and filled with a calm optimism - Goethe perhaps created his greatest work, surpassing even his Faust, Germany's most national drama.

Goethe was born in Frankfurt am Main on Aug. 28, 1749. He was the eldest son of Johann Kaspar Goethe and Katharina Elisabeth Textor Goethe. Goethe's father, of Thuringian stock, had studied law at the University of Leipzig. He did not practice his profession, but in 1742 he acquired the title of kaiserlicher Rat (imperial councilor). In 1748 he married the daughter of Frankfurt's burgomaster. Of the children born to Goethe's parents only Johann and his sister Cornelia survived to maturity. She married Goethe's friend J. G. Schlosser in 1773. Goethe's lively and impulsive disposition and his remarkable imaginative powers probably came to him from his mother, and he likely inherited his reserved manner and his stability of character from his stern and often pedantic father.

Early Life

Goethe has left a memorable picture of his childhood, spent in a large patrician house on the Grosse Hirschgraben in Frankfurt, in his autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit. He and Cornelia were educated at home by private tutors. Books, pictures, and a marionette theater kindled the young Goethe's quick intellect and imagination.

During the Seven Years War the French occupied Frankfurt. A French theatrical troupe established itself, and Goethe, through his grandfather's influence, was allowed free access to its performances. He much improved his knowledge of French by attending the performances and by his contact with the actors. Meantime, his literary proclivities had begun to manifest themselves in religious poems, a novel, and a prose epic.

In October 1765 Goethe - then 16 years old - left Frankfurt for the University of Leipzig. He remained in Leipzig until 1768, pursuing his legal studies with zeal. During this period he also took lessons in drawing from A. F. Oeser, the director of the Leipzig Academy of Painting. Art always remained an abiding interest throughout Goethe's life.

During his Leipzig years Goethe began writing light Anacreontic verses. Much of his poetry of these years was inspired by his passionate love for Anna Katharina Schönkopf, the daughter of a wine merchant in whose tavern he dined. She was the "Annette" for whom the collection of lyrics discovered in 1895 was named.

The rupture of a blood vessel in one of his lungs put an end to Goethe's Leipzig years. From 1768 to the spring of 1770 Goethe lay ill, first in Leipzig and later at home.

It was a period of serious introspection. The Anacreontic playfulness of verse and the rococo manner of his Leipzig period were soon swept away as Goethe grew in stature as a human being and as a poet.

Study in Strasbourg

Goethe's father was determined his son should continue his legal studies. Upon his recovery, therefore, Goethe was sent to Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace and a city that lay outside the German Empire. There his true Promethean self and his poetic genius were fully awakened. One of the most important events of Goethe's Strasbourg period was his meeting with Johann Gottfried von Herder. Herder taught Goethe the significance of Gothic architecture, as exemplified by the Strasbourg Minster, and he kindled Goethe's love of Homer, Pindar, Ossian, Shakespeare, and the Volkslied. Without neglecting his legal studies, Goethe also studied medicine.

Perhaps the most important occurrence of this period was Goethe's love for Friederike Brion, the daughter of the pastor of the nearby village of Sesenheim. Later Goethe immortalized Friederike as Gretchen in Faust. She also inspired the Friederike Songs and many beautiful lyrics. Kleine Blumen, kleine Blätter and Wie herrlich leuchtet mir die Natur! heralded a new era in German lyric poetry.

During this Strasbourg period Goethe also reshaped his Alsatian Heidenröslein. His lyrical response to the Gothic architecture of Strasbourg Minster appeared in his essay Von deutscher Baukunst (1772). Goethe also probably planned his first important drama, Götz von Berlichingen, while in Strasbourg. In August 1771 Goethe obtained a licentiate in law, though not a doctor's degree. He returned to Frankfurt in September and remained there until early 1772.

"Sturm und Drang" Period

From spring to September 1772 Goethe spent 4 months in Wetzlar in order to gain experience in the legal profession at the supreme courts of the empire. However, Goethe found a more genial society in a local inn among the "Knights of the Round Table," calling himself "Götz von Berlichingen."

Goethe's passionate love for Charlotte Buff - who was the daughter of the Wetzlar Amtmann (bailiff) and was engaged to Johann Christian Kestner, the secretary of legation and a member of the Round Table - created a crisis. Out of its agony - Goethe's obsession with Charlotte led him almost to suicide - the poet created the world-famous novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774). A Rhine journey in the autumn of 1772 and intense preoccupation with his literary projects on his return to Frankfurt brought partial recovery to Goethe.

Goethe remained in Frankfurt until the autumn of 1775, and these were years of fantastic productivity. Götz von Berlichingen was finished in 1773. This play established the Shakespearean type of drama on the German stage and inaugurated the Sturm und Drang movement. Another play - Clavigo - soon followed. A tragedy, Clavigo marked considerable advancement in Goethe's art.

Die Leiden des jungen Werthers appeared in 1774. This novel, written in the epistolary style, brought Goethe international fame and spread "Werther fever" throughout Europe and even into Asia. A sentimental story of love and suicide, Werther utilized the private and social experiences of its author's months in Wetzlar, molding them into one of the most powerful introspective novels of all time. Its psychological impact upon Goethe's contemporaries and its influence on German literature can scarcely be exaggerated.

Many unfinished fragments - some of them magnificent - also date from these years. Goethe worked on the dramas Caesar and Mahomet and the epic Der ewige Jude. A fragment of Prometheus, a tragedy, ranks among the poet's masterpieces. Perhaps the greatest work from these years was Goethe's first dramatization of the Faust legend.

During these years Goethe's poetic genius found its own unique self. The masterpieces of this great Sturm und Drang period include Wanderers Sturmlied (1771); Mahomets Gesang (1772-1773); An Schwager Kronos (1774); Prometheus (1774), a symbol of the self-confident genius; and Ganymed (1774), the embodiment of man's abandonment to the mysteries of the universe.

In 1775 Goethe fell in love with Lili Schönemann, the daughter of a Frankfurt banker. Goethe became formally betrothed to her, and Lili inspired many beautiful lyrics. However, the worldly society Lili thrived in was not congenial to the poet. A visit to Switzerland in the summer of 1775 helped Goetherealize that this marriage might be unwise, and the engagement lapsed that autumn. Neue Liebe, Neues Leben and An Belinden (both 1775) are poetic expressions of Goethe's happiest hours with Lili, while Auf dem See, written on June 15, 1775, reflects his mood after he broke the spell that his love for Lili had cast upon him. Goethe also conceived another drama during these Frankfurt years and actually wrote a great part of it. However, he did not publish Egmont until 1788. Graf Egmont, its protagonist, is endowed with a demonic power over the sympathies of both men and women, and he represents the lighter side of Goethe's vision - a foil to Faust - and his more optimistic outlook.

Career in Weimar

On Oct. 12, 1775, the young prince of Weimar, Duke Karl August, arrived in Frankfurt and extended an invitation to Goethe to accompany him to Weimar. On November 7 Goethe arrived in the capital of the little Saxon duchy that was to remain his home for the rest of his life. The young duke soon enlisted Goethe's services in the government of his duchy, and before long Goethe had been entrusted with responsible state duties.

As minister of state, Goethe interested himself in agriculture, horticulture, and mining, all fields of economic importance to the duchy's welfare. Eventually his many state offices in Weimar and his social and political commitments became a burden and a hindrance to his creative writing. Perhaps Goethe's most irksome responsibility was the office of president of the Treasury after 1782.

Goethe made his first long stay at Weimar from November 1775 until the summer of 1786. In 1782 Emperor Joseph II conferred a knighthood on him. During these 12 years Goethe's attachment for Charlotte von Stein, the wife of a Weimar official and the mother of seven children, dominated his emotional life. A woman of refined taste and culture, Frau von Stein was 7 years Goethe's senior and was perhaps the most intellectual of the poet's many loves.

The literary output of the first Weimar period included a number of lyrics (Wanderers Nachtlied, An den Mond, and Gesang der Geister über den Wassern), ballads (DerErlkönig), a short drama (Die Geschwister), a dramatic satire (Der Triumph der Empfindsamkeit), and several Singspiele (Lila; Die Fischerin; Scherz; List und Rache; and Jery und Bätely). Goethe also planned a religious epic (Die Geheimnisse) and a tragedy (Elpenor). In 1777 Goethe began to write a theatrical novel, Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung. In 1779 the prose version of his drama Iphigenie auf Tauris was performed.

Under Frau von Stein's influence Goethe matured as an artist as well as a personality. His course toward artistic and human harmony and renunciation was mirrored in several poems written during this period: Harzreise im Winter (1777); Ein Gleiches (1780), Ilmenau (1783), and Zueignung (1784).

Italian Journey

In September 1786 Goethe set out from Karlsbad on his memorable and intensely longed-for journey to Italy. He traveled by way of Munich, the Brenner Pass, and Lago di Garda to Verona and Venice. He arrived in Rome on Oct. 29, 1786, and soon established friendships in the circle of German artists. In the spring of 1787 Goethe traveled to Naples and Sicily, returning to Rome in June 1787. He departed for Weimar on April 2, 1788.

It would be almost impossible to overstate the importance of Goethe's Italian journey. Goethe regarded it as the high point of his life, feeling it had helped him attain a deep understanding of his poetic genius and his mission as a poet. No longer in sympathy with Sturm und Drang even before his departure from Weimar, Goethe was initiated into neoclassicism by his vision of the antique in Italy. Goethe returned to Weimar not only with a new artistic vision but also with a freer attitude toward life. He recorded this journey in his Italienische Reise at the time of his trip, but he did not publish this volume until 1816-1817.

Return to Weimar

Goethe returned from Italy unsettled and restless. Shortly afterward, his ties with Frau von Stein having been weakened by his extended stay in Italy and by lighter pleasures he had known there, Goethe took the daughter of a town official into his house as his mistress. Christiane Vulpius, although she could offer no intellectual companionship, provided the comforts of a home. Gradually, she became indispensable as a helpmate, although she was ignored by Goethe's friends and unwelcome at court. Their son August was born in 1789, and Goethe married her in 1806, when the French invasion of Weimar endangered her position.

Goethe had finished Egmont in Italy. Additional literary fruits of his trip were the Römische Elegien, which reflected Italy's pagan influences, written in 1788-1789; the iambic version of Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787); and a Renaissance drama, Torquato Tasso (1790). Goethe also planned an epic Nausikaa and a drama Iphigenie auf Delphos. Faust was brought an additional step forward, part of it being published in 1790 as Faust, Ein Fragment.

Meanwhile, two new interests engrossed Goethe and renewed his Weimar ties. In 1791 he was appointed director of the ducal theater, a position he held for 22 years; and he became increasingly absorbed in scientific pursuits. From his scientific studies in anatomy, botany, optics, meteorology, and mineralogy, he gradually reached a vision of the unity of the outward and inward worlds. Not only nature and art but also science were, in his view, governed by one organic force that rules all metamorphoses of appearances.

It is absolutely misleading, however, to suggest as some critics have that after his Italian journeys Goethe became a scientist and ceased to be a poet. In 1793 Goethe composed Reineke Fuchs, a profane "World Bible" in hexameters. He also took up his abandoned novel of the theater. His projected study of a young man's theatrical apprenticeship was transformed into an apprenticeship to life. Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, varying between realism and poetic romanticism, became the archetypal Bildungsroman. Its influence on German literature was profound and enduring after its publication in 1795-1796.

Goethe's unique literary friendship with Friedrich von Schiller began in 1794. To it Goethe owed in great degree his renewed dedication to poetry. Goethe contributed to Schiller's new periodical Die Horen, composed Xenien with him in 1795-1796, received Schiller's encouragement to finish Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, and undertook at his urging the studies that resulted in the epic Hermann und Dorothea and the fragment Achilleis. Schiller's urging also induced Goethe to return once more to Faust and to conclude the first part of it. Xenien, a collection of distichs, contains several masterpieces, and Hermann und Dorothea (1797) ranks as one of the poet's most perfect creations.

From Goethe's friendly rivalry with Schiller issued a number of ballad masterpieces: Der Zauberlehrling, Der Gott und die Bajadere, Die Braut von Korinth, Alexis und Dora, Der neue Pausias, and the cycle of four Müller-Lieder.

Goethe's classicism brought him into eventual conflict with the developing romantic movement. To present his theories, he published, in conjunction with Heinrich Meyer, from 1798 to 1800 an art review entitled Die Propyläen. Goethe also defended his ideals of classical beauty in 1805 in Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert. But the triumphant publication of the first part of Faust in 1808 defeated Goethe's own classical ideals. It was received as a landmark of romantic art.

Last Years

The last period of Goethe's life began with Schiller's death in 1805. In 1806 he published his magnificent tribute to Schiller Epilog zu Schillers Glocke. In 1807 Bettina von Arnim became the latest (but not the last) of Goethe's loves, for the poet soon developed a more intense interest in Minna Herzlieb, the foster daughter of a Jena publisher.

The publication of the first part of Faust in 1808 was followed by the issuance the next year of a novel, Die Wahlverwandtschaften, an intimate psychological study of four minds. The most classical and allegorical of Goethe's works, Pandora, was published in 1808. The scientific treatise Zur Farbenlehre appeared in 1810.

In 1811 Goethe published the first volume of his autobiography, Aus meinem Leben, Dichtung und Wahrheit. Volumes 2 and 3 followed in 1812 and 1814. The fourth, ending with Goethe's departure from Frankfurt in 1775 for Weimar, appeared in 1833, after his death. Additional materials for a continuation of Dichtung und Wahrheit into the Weimar years were collected in Tag und Jahreshefte (1830).

Increasingly aloof from national, political, and literary partisanship in his last period, Goethe became more and more an Olympian divinity to whose shrine at Weimar all Europe made pilgrimage. In 1819 Goethe published another masterpiece, this one a collection of lyrics inspired by his young friend Marianne von Willemer, who figures as Sulieka in the cycle. Suggested by his reading of the Persian poet Hafiz, the poems that constitute Westöstlicher Diwan struck another new note in German poetry with their introduction of Eastern elements.

Meanwhile, death was thinning the ranks of Goethe's acquaintances: Wieland, the last of Goethe's great literary contemporaries, died in 1813; Christiane in 1816; Charlotte von Stein in 1827; Duke Karl August in 1828; and Goethe's son August died of scarlet fever in Rome in 1830.

In 1822 still another passion for a beautiful young girl, Ulrike von Levetzow, inspired Goethe's Trilogie der Leidenschaft: An Werther, Marienbader Elegie, and Aussöhnung. The trilogy is a passionate and unique work of art written in 1823-1824, when Goethe was approaching the age of 75. Between 1821 and 1829 Goethe published the long-promised continuation of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre - Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, a loose series of episodes in novel form. His Novelle appeared in 1828.

However, the crowning achievement of Goethe's literary career was the completion of the second part of Faust. This work had accompanied Goethe since his early 20s and constitutes a full "confession" of his life. The second part, not published until after Goethe's death, exhibited the poet's ripe wisdom and his philosophy of life. In his Faust Goethe recast the old legend and made it into one of Western literature's greatest and noblest poetic creations. The salvation of Faust was Goethe's main departure from the original legend, and he handled it nobly in the impressively mystical closing scene of the second part.

Goethe died in Weimar on March 22, 1832. He was buried in the ducal crypt at Weimar beside Schiller.

Further Reading

Goethe reveals himself in Goethe's Autobiography: Poetry and Truth from My Life (trans. 1932) and Italian Journey, 1786-1788 (trans. 1962). An excellent introduction to Goethe the man is David Luke and Robert Pick, eds., Goethe: Conversations and Encounters (1966), a collection of writings by his contemporaries. Biographies of Goethe include John G. Robertson, The Life and Work of Goethe, 1749-1832 (1932), and Richard Friedenthal, Goethe: His Life and Times (1963; trans. 1965). Among the best introductions to Goethe's work are Barker Fairley, A Study of Goethe (1947); Henry Hatfield, Goethe: A Critical Introduction (1963); and Ronald Gray, Goethe: A Critical Introduction (1967). Georg Lukács, Goethe and His Age (1948; trans. 1968) analyzes him from a Marxist viewpoint. His writings and thought are examined in Barker Fairley, Goethe as Revealed in His Poetry (1932; rev. ed. 1963); Ronald Peacock, Goethe's Major Plays (1959); Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby, Goethe: Poet and Thinker (1962); and Hans Reiss, Goethe's Novels (1963; trans. 1969).

Contemporary scholars discuss Goethe in Victor Lange, ed., Goethe: A Collection of Critical Essays (1968). Specialized studies include Humphry Trevelyan, Goethe and the Greeks (1941); Adolf I. Frantz, Half a Hundred Thralls to Faust: A Study Based on the British and the American Translators of Goethe's Faust, 1823-1949 (1949); and Stuart Pratt Atkins, The Testament of Werther in Poetry and Drama (1949) and Goethe's Faust: A Literary Analysis (1958).

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749–1832). Germany's Olympian poet and dramatist, Goethe turned to literary fairy tales on several occasions in mid‐life, integrating them into memoirs and novels. Chapbooks read in his childhood introduced him to popular tales like ‘Fortunatus’, ‘Melusine’, ‘Till Eulenspiegel’, and ‘The Wandering Jew’, and storytelling at home made children's stories like ‘The Brave Little Tailor’ familiar. In his twenties he made references in his correspondence to magical components recognizable from fairy tales such as ‘The Juniper Tree’, ‘One‐Eye, Two‐Eyes, and Three‐Eyes’, and ‘The Frog King’. Like all educated urban Germans of the 18th century, Goethe was also acquainted with French tales about fairies, both through his own reading and, by his own account, from stories his lively young mother had told him in his youth. In his first novel, Die Leiden des jungen Werther (The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774), he developed this motif and had his protagonist Werther tell children stories.

As the 61‐year‐old author of Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth, part I, book 2), Goethe reported recounting to childhood playmates a ‘fairy tale for boys’, ‘Der neue Paris’ (‘The New Paris’). A dream sequence, it embedded the narrative in a real and well‐known location, the fortifications surrounding Frankfurt am Main. But the tale drew its elaborate magic, classic references, colourful cast of beautiful nymphs, and inventory of delicate crystal, exotic fruit, and courtly entertainments from the style and content of 18th‐century French tales about fairies.

In part 2, book 10 of Poetry and Truth, Goethe recorded telling ‘Die neue Melusine’ (‘The New Melusine’) to a group of young friends near Strasbourg as a young man. Typical of the literary trajectory of many modern stories, it was a legend that had been published as a Volksbuch and developed by Mlle de Lubert as ‘Princess Camion’ before it entered Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (Wilhelm Meister's Years of Travel, 1821) as a novella (3.6). His final effort, ‘Das Märchen’ (‘The Fairy Tale’), composed in 1795, became part of Conversation of German Emigrants (Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten).

‘The Fairy Tale’ was Goethe's attempt to compose the consummate narrative of this genre and to address the chaos brought about by the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. The basic theme of the complex symbolical fairy tale concerns the golden age and the restoration of order and harmony on earth. In ‘The Fairy Tale’ two lands are separated by a river, and chaos reigns. A peasant man with a light is called upon to go to the temple on the other side of the river and to help cure the dying Lily. Various characters such as the ferryman, two will‐o'‐the‐wisps, a beautiful green serpent, and a young man must make sacrifices and work together to bring about the establishment of a new enlightened realm. Goethe's ‘Fairy Tale’ has been interpreted as a religious, political, philosophical, and even economic allegory. Novalis, the German romantic poet, wrote a fairy tale about Klingsohr to critique Goethe's work, and numerous German writers up to the present day have been influenced by it.

Like many others in 18th‐century Germany, Goethe had been influenced by imports from France like The Arabian Nights and tales about fairies. In high old age he enjoyed telling such stories to the princesses of the Weimar court and to his own grandchildren.

Respectful 19th‐century contemporaries like J. G. Büsching and Wilhelm Grimm kept Goethe informed about newly published German fairy‐tale collections. Goethe's references to brief narratives and to fairy tales in theoretical terms are varied and various, admiring, analytical, and denigrating in turn. His remarks reflect the tension that fairy tales generate and express between competing realms: magic and morality, fantasy and reason. His utterances also embody his mixed experience with fairy tales, which included a notably failed effort to compose a sequel to the Zauberflöte.

Bibliography

• Geulen, Hans, ‘Goethes Kunstmärchen “Der neue Paris” und “Die neue Melusine”: Ihre poetologischen Imaginationen und Spielformen’, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 59.1 (1985).
• Hoermann, Roland, “‘Goethe's Masked Masque in “Das Märchen”: Theatrical Anticipations of Romanticism's Self‐Reflexive Peril’”, in Clifford A. Bernd (ed.), Romanticism and Beyond (1996).
• Mommsen, Katharina, “‘“Märchen der Utopien”: Goethes Märchen und Schillers Ästhetische Briefe’”, in Jürgen Brummack (ed.), Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte (1981).
• Solbrig, Ingeborg H., ‘Symbolik und ambivalente Funktion des Goldes in Goethes “Märchen”’, Jahrbuch des Wiener Goethe‐Vereins, 73 (1969).
• Witte, Bernd, “‘Das Opfer der Schlange: Zur Auseinandersetzung Goethes mit Schiller in den Unterhaltungen deutschen Ausgewanderten und in Märchen’”, in Wilfried Barner (ed.), Unser Commercium: Goethe und Schillers Literaturpolitik (1984).

— Ruth B. Bottigheimer

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (Frankfurt/Main, 1749-1832, Weimar), who was elevated to the nobility as J. W. von Goethe in 1782, was born into a patrician household. On the mother's side the grandparents, Textor by name, were an old-established and influential family; the father, Johann Caspar Goethe, was well-to-do, though not of ancient Frankfurt descent. The Goethes lived in a large and comfortable house in the Hirschgasse (see Goethe-Haus). Johann Caspar was a man of artistic interests, serious nature, and limited imaginative capacity. Katharina Elisabeth, Goethe's mother, known later as Frau Aja, was in contrast lively, perceptive, and full of fantasy. Their respective influences were humorously summed up by Goethe in the lines:

Vom Vater hab ich die Statur,
Des Lebens ernstes Führen;
Vom Mütterchen die Frohnatur
Und Lust zum Fabulieren.

Wolfgang Goethe was educated at home. In 1759 the family life was disturbed by French occupation and billeting, but the boy derived artistic stimulus and understanding from painters working for the French commander, who lived in the Goethes' house. In 1762 Goethe was sent to Leipzig University, where he neglected his studies, acquired fashionable manners, educated his taste in painting, fell in love (with Käthchen Schönkopf), and learned to write elegant erotic poetry. The short pastoral play Die Laune des Verliebten also dates from this time. Goethe fell seriously ill in 1768 and had to return to Frankfurt, where for a time his life was despaired of. During this illness he was influenced by a devout friend of his mother's, Susanna von Klettenberg, who is recalled in Bk. 6 of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre; he also made alchemical studies which were to have a bearing on Faust. The play Die Mitschuldigen, which in spirit belongs to the Leipzig years, was written down in this period of recuperation and reflection in Frankfurt.

In March 1770 Goethe arrived in Strasburg in order to complete his university studies in law. The eighteen months which he spent there represent a period of rapid development of his mind and unfolding of his talent.

J. G. Herder, who spent the autumn in Strasburg, opened Goethe's eyes to new sources of poetry in folk-song, and this new valuation of simplicity and spontaneity coincided with an idyllic love affair with Friederike Brion, daughter of the pastor of Sesenheim. ‘Mailied’ and ‘Willkommen und Abschied’, two poems in the new manner, springing from the heart, are both related to his love for Friederike. In the autumn of 1771 Goethe, having completed his studies, returned to Frankfurt, breaking off his relationship with Friederike; he worked for a time in his father's legal practice. Influenced by Herder's appreciation of Shakespeare's genius (see Zum Schäkespears Tag) he wrote at speed a pseudo-Shakespearian tragedy, Geschichte Gottfriedens von Berlichingen. This, however, was so ill received by Herder that Goethe put it aside, revising it two years later, and publishing it in 1773 as Götz von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand. In the spring of 1772 his father sent him to Wetzlar to gain experience of the Reichskammergericht; he did little work, but fell desperately in love with Charlotte Buff, who was betrothed to another. In September Goethe tore himself away and returned to Frankfurt, still tormented by his love. He resolved his anguish at last in 1774 in Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, the sensationally successful novel of the hypersensitive outsider, for whom the world has no place.

In Frankfurt he became the centre of the group who formed the inner circle of the Sturm und Drang, F. M. Klinger, J. M. R. Lenz, H. L. Wagner, and F. (Maler) Müller. He wrote stormy poetry in free rhythms (see Freie Rhythmen), such as ‘Wanderers Sturmlied’, ‘Prometheus’, and ‘An Schwager Kronos’, drafted the scenes of a Faust play, now called Urfaust, and composed brilliant and highspirited satires such as Götter, Helden und Wieland (in prose), and Satyros (in verse). He wrote the domestic tragedy (see Bürgerliches Trauerspiel) Clavigo in a week in 1774, and Stella, the play of a man between two women, in 1775. In the summer of 1775 he began Egmont, and all the time he wrote poems of notable originality and beauty, such as ‘Neue Liebe, neues Leben’ and ‘Herbstgefühl’. Goethe also wrote about this time Erwin und Elmira and Claudine von Villa Bella, light plays with music (see Singspiel), of which he was to produce three more in the years 1779-82 (see Jery und Bätely and Fischerin, Die).

In 1775 Goethe fell in love with Lili Schönemann, a patrician's daughter, to whom he became engaged; her personality charmed him, her social environment jarred on his unconventionality. In the summer he unsuccessfully sought escape from his love for her in a Swiss tour with young and over-enthusiastic friends, the Counts C. and F. L. Stolberg. In September the engagement with Lili was broken off, and for a variety of reasons, including a certain impatience with his Sturm und Drang cronies, Goethe gladly accepted an invitation to visit the young Duke of Saxe-Weimar (see Karl August). Though the first months at Weimar were boisterous ones (the 18-year-old Duke expected from his guest co-operation in pranks and wild-cat expeditions), Goethe rapidly developed—partly under the influence of the serene-tempered lady-in-waiting Frau von Stein—into a mature and balanced man with a gift for administration. In June 1776 he was appointed to the Duke's cabinet, and in the following ten years he took on many of the tasks of government, and was in effect the Duke's right-hand man. Goethe himself paid tribute to the calming influence which Frau von Stein exerted upon him in the difficulties and harassments of these busy years. It is often said that his poetry suffered under the distractions of governmental work, and he himself frequently deplored the calls upon his time; nevertheless his output was not inconsiderable, and its quality was of the highest. Poems such as ‘Harzreise im Winter’, ‘An den Mond’, ‘Gesang der Geister über den Wassern’, ‘Wanderers Nachtlied’. (‘Der du von dem Himmel bist’, and see ‘Über allen Gipfeln’), and some of the wonderful songs in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre were written in these Weimar years. Numerous poems and songs were set to music by composers ranging from Mozart and F. Schubert to Othmar Schoeck. In 1779 Goethe began the first version of Iphigenie auf Tauris; in the following year he started Torquato Tasso (published in 1787 and 1790 respectively). In approximately eight years (from 1777) he completed the six substantial books of Wilhelm Meisters Theatralische Sendung (unpublished in Goethe's lifetime). His interest had swung away from the tempestuous energy of the Sturm und Drang and was moving towards the discipline, serenity, and balance of classical art.

The combination of a weariness with administrative tasks and a desire to study classicism at its source prompted Goethe to plan a temporary absence from Weimar. In September 1786 he set out for Italy, where he spent nearly two years, during which he experienced a sense not only of relaxation but of renewal. Italy released the springs of writing. Iphigenie auf Tauris was remodelled in verse, Egmont (1788) and Torquato Tasso (1790) completed. Two scenes of Faust, which had lain idle for ten years, were conceived and written, and the work came to provisional publication as Faust. Ein Fragment (1790). The Italian journey enabled Goethe above all to make a complete reorientation, to find, as it seemed to him, in harmony and balance the full and complete expression of his personality.

Goethe returned to Weimar in 1788, and at once found himself at a distance from his former friends, who did not comprehend the change in him. The estrangement, which extended to Frau von Stein, was augmented when Goethe took into his house as his mistress Christiane Vulpius (see Goethe, Christiane), a handsome young woman of lower rank. Goethe sought and obtained release from his administrative responsibilities, and devoted himself to antique and scientific studies, and to the organization of his own collections of objets d'art and scientific specimens, which he substantially expanded as the years passed. In 1791 he nevertheless accepted appointment as director of the newly opened Weimar theatre, which he retained until 1817. The poetry of these years was almost exclusively classical, and principally in elegiac form. The elegy Alexis und Dora was written in 1789, and in 1795 the once notorious Römische Elegien, neo-classical erotic poems as tender as they are sensual, appeared in Schiller's Die Horen.

Goethe's first published testimonies of his scientific interests, Versuch, die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären and Beiträge zur Optik, appeared in 1790 and 1791 respectively. In 1790 he paid a second visit to Italy, going to Venice in connection with a visit of the Duchess Anna Amalia, but the old magic of the south refused to rekindle on this semi-official occasion. To Goethe, in his dual absorption in the art of the ancient world and in science, the French Revolution seemed a deplorable irrelevance, but he found himself involved in its consequences when he was required to accompany Duke Karl August on the invasion of France by imperial troops in the autumn of 1792; he was present at the siege of Mainz in the following year. His autobiographical accounts of these events, Campagne in Frankreich. 1792 and Die Belagerung von Mainz, were not written until 1820-1. Goethe's immediate response to affairs in France is incorporated in three comedies, which are among his weakest works: Der Groß-Cophta (1791), Der Bürgergeneral (1793), and the unfinished Die Aufgeregten (1791, published 1817).

An important new work of fiction, Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten, was published in 1795, and in 1795-6 there appeared the definitive revised version of Wilhelm Meister as the novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre; concerned with the education of personality (see Bildungsroman), it was to fascinate the next generation (see Romantik).

Schiller lived in Weimar from 1787 to 1789, when he moved to Jena, but Goethe's relationship with him remained cool until 1794, when overtures by Schiller penetrated Goethe's reserve, and inaugurated a lasting intellectual friendship; it was based on their common classicism and on their conviction of the central function of art in human affairs. Goethe's classical poetry had on the whole repelled the public, but his idyllically treated epic poem Hermann und Dorothea (1797) was favourably received. Both Goethe and Schiller felt a resistance in their contemporaries to their classical doctrines; in 1796 they carried the war into the hostile camp by publishing, in Schiller's Musenalmanach, the Xenien, satirical epigrams in which they ridiculed the opposition. The Musenalmanach of the following year contained, as a positive sequel to the negative Xenien, ballads by both authors; Goethe's contribution included ‘Der Zauberlehrling’ and ‘Die Braut von Korinth’. It was Schiller who, in 1797, succeeded in stimulating in Goethe a renewed interest in Faust, which was to preoccupy him intermittently for the next nine years, and again at intervals in later life (Part One appeared in 1808, Part Two in 1832). A classicistic journal for the arts, Die Propyläen, which Goethe launched in 1798, did not succeed, and ceased publication after two years. The next years saw Goethe's literary classicism in its most uncompromising form with such works as the unfinished epic Achilleis, Die natürliche Tochter (1804), the first play of an uncompleted trilogy, and the Festspiel Pandora. The death of Schiller in 1805 coincided with the end of this classical phase.

When in 1806 war broke out between France and Prussia, the decisive battle was fought at Jena (see Napoleonic Wars), and French soldiers, occupying Weimar, broke into Goethe's house. Goethe believed that Christiane saved his life from these marauders, and a few days later he had their long-standing liaison legitimized in marriage. His new marital state did not inhibit a powerful attraction to Wilhelmine (Minchen) Herzlieb in the following year, which flowered for a few weeks before it was repressed. In 1809 appeared the subtle and problematical novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften, treating the interrelations of two couples. It was in 1808 that Goethe's encounters with Napoleon took place at Erfurt and Weimar. He recognized a daemonic power more readily in Napoleon than in Beethoven, whom he met without enthusiasm four years later. These years were largely spent in scientific work, and in writing his autobiography. His theory of light and colour, which ran counter to Newton's, was incorporated in Zur Farbenlehre (1810). The first three volumes of the autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit (full title Aus meinem Leben. Dichtung und Wahrheit) appeared in 1811-14. The fourth and last volume was delayed until 1832 after Goethe's death. The whole autobiography covers the first twenty-six years of his life, ending with his removal to Weimar. His record of his Italian journey (Italienische Reise) appeared in 1816-17.

As Napoleon's grasp on Europe relaxed, Goethe spent much time in Frankfurt, cultivating the friendship of a young married woman, Marianne von Willemer, the most gifted and intelligent of the many women to whom he was attracted. His collection of pseudo-oriental poetry, West-östlicher Divan (1819), is closely associated with her, and even contains several unacknowledged poems by her hand. The relaxed geniality of this volume is a symptom of Goethe's sense of renewal and serenity. In 1821 to 1823 he took his farewell of Wilhelm Meister with the first publication of the desultory novel Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre oder Die Entsagenden. The summers of 1821 to 1823 he spent in Marienbad, and here his last passion flamed up, the object of which was a 17-year-old girl, Ulrike von Levetzow. The pain of renunciation in which this attraction ended is expressed in the three poems of his Trilogie der Leidenschaft. Among his last works was Novelle (1828), which had its genesis thirty years earlier. Goethe's old age was spent in increasing loneliness; Christiane had predeceased him in 1816, Frau von Stein died in 1827, Duke Karl August in 1828, and Goethe's son August in 1830. Goethe worked away at the last volume of Dichtung und Wahrheit and at Faust Pt. II, which he completed not long before he died on 22 March 1832.

The span of Goethe's eighty-two years covers a critical period in the development of the modern world. The Bastille was stormed when he was 39 and three years later his sense of historical awareness led him to say to his companions at Valmy: ‘Von hier und heute geht eine neue Epoche der Weltgeschichte aus und Ihr könnt sagen, Ihr seid dabei gewesen’. Rooted in the old world, he met the new with dispassionate understanding. He was a man of remarkable range. Fiery, energetic, and impatient in youth, he grew into a shrewd, resourceful, and tenacious administrator, and stylized himself in old age into a remote oracular figure of Olympian stature. Best known as a man of letters, he nevertheless also had a distinct talent for drawing, was interested in acting, and became a successful theatre director. His knowledge of antique art was comprehensive and profound. In science he concerned himself with biology, both in detail and in general evolutionary concepts, with optics, and with mineralogy. His practical pursuits extended to mining, economics, architecture, horticulture; and landscape gardening. He is sometimes referred to as the last universal man. And he has the distinction of being perhaps the most fully documented creative artist.

For a man who is universally regarded as a writer of the first rank, Goethe's œuvre is surprisingly fragmented. Its diversity is remarkable, both in style (ranging from Sturm und Drang subjectivism to the conscious harmony of classicism) and in form, which includes lyric, epic, and ballad poetry, drama, novels, shorter tales, and autobiographical works. Many of these writings are imperfect, either fragments or works which seem to have a flaw of development, a fracture or rift. Perfection is only achieved in his lyric poetry and in a handful of works chiefly written in his classical period (Iphigenie auf Tauris, Hermann und Dorothea, and perhaps also the novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften). Fragmentariness is, however, in Goethe's work no defect; it is the essence of his literary genius. He himself said: ‘Alle meine Werke sind Bruchstücke einer großen Konfession’. It is the immediacy of Goethe's works which is their special characteristic. They reflect facets of an extraordinarily rich, multiple, Protean personality, in all its changing moods and varied experiences. Not surprisingly, Goethe is one of the most original and powerful German lyric poets, but the immense panorama of Faust, reflecting the developing vision of a lifetime, with its comedy and tragedy, pathos, wit, and satire, is a work of inexhaustible ambiguity and magical poetry.

Following the custom of his age, Goethe from time to time published collected editions of his works. These comprise Schriften (8 vols., 1787-90), Neue Schriften (7 vols., 1792-1800), Werke (13 vols., 1806-10, the first to be produced by J. F. Cotta), and Werke (20 vols., 1815-19, expanded to 26 vols., 1820-2). The definitive edition begun in Goethe's lifetime is Goethes Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe letzter Hand (60 vols., 1827-42, see Ausgabe letzter Hand).

The comprehensive Weimarer Ausgabe, also called Sophienausgabe after its patroness, the Grand Duchess Sophie of Saxe-Weimar, appeared in 143 volumes (1887-1920). Other notable editions include the Jubiläums-Ausgabe (ed. E. von der Hellen, 41 vols., 1902-12), the Propyläen-Ausgabe (49 vols., 1909-32, chronological), the Hamburger Ausgabe (ed. E. Trunz, 14 vols. with Sachregister, 1948-64, widely used because of its critical apparatus), the Ausgabe der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1952 ff., and the (Artemis) Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe und Gespräche. 28. August 1949 (27 vols., incl. 3 suppl. vols.), ed. E. Beutler, 1948-71; the Berliner Ausgabe (23 vols., incl. 1 suppl. vol.), ed. S. Seidel, appeared 1960-78, Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens. Münchner Ausgabe, ed. K. Richter et al., 1985 ff., Sämtliche Werke. Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche, Frankfurter Ausgabe, 1988 ff., Die Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft. Leopoldina-Ausgabe (22 vols.), ed. G. Schmid, W. Troll, L. Wolf, from 1957 D. Kuhn et al., Weimar 1947-77.

Selections of Goethe's letters include Goethe-Briefe (ed. P. Stein, 8 vols., 1924) and 4 vols. supplementary to the Hamburger Ausgabe, ed. K. R. Mandelkow, 1962-6, Goethe und Cotta. Briefwechsel 1797-1832 (3 vols. in 4), ed. D. Kuhn, 1979-83, Goethe und Schiller (3 vols.), ed. S. Seidel, 1984. An edition in translation, Goethe's Collected Works (12 vols.), by V. Lange et al. appeared 1985 ff.

See also Eckermann, J. P. and Goethe-Gesellschaft.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832) German man of letters. As a philosopher the great writer is mainly interesting as an influence on others, particularly Schiller and Schelling. Goethe was influenced by Spinoza's pantheism, Leibniz's panpsychism, and the moral philosophy of Kant, but he confessed his own lack of a ‘proper organ for philosophy’; something of his lack of rigour can be seen in the remark that ‘we are pantheists when we study nature, polytheists when we write poetry, monotheists in our morality’. However his work on colour, inspired by a temperamental revulsion from Newton's purely mathematical theory of the spectrum, has been rediscovered and re-evaluated in the light of recent work.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von (1749–1832; elevated to the nobility as von Goethe in 1782), German writer, scientist, and statesman. The dominant figure of the German Classicist-Romantic period, and for many still the most influential of all German writers, Goethe was often referred to as the last Renaissance man. He successfully cultivated a multitude of extraordinary talents, while his works, especially Faust and his novels, expressed and helped shape modern individualism. He brought radical subjectivity to German poetry and expressed a modern view of history: history revealed in the exceptional individual. The cult of Goethe as the eminent icon of German culture (in the much-lamented absence of a nation-state) and his canonization began during his lifetime, which also saw the beginnings of German philology and literary historiography. Recent scholarship has examined and reevaluated the diverse cultural production in Goethe's "shadow," especially the writing of Charlotte von Stein (1742–1827) and Marianne von Willemer (1784–1860), who had previously been of interest in numerous biographies of Goethe merely as his beloved and as the inspiration and models for his fictional characters.

Goethe was the first child of a patrician couple in Frankfurt am Main, the coronation city of the Holy Roman Empire. Retired imperial councillor Johann Caspar Goethe (1710–1782) and Katharina Elisabeth, née Textor (1731–1808), a major's daughter, led a cultured life and valued artistic endeavors. The only surviving son, Goethe enjoyed a privileged humanistic education at home together with his sister Cornelia (1750–1777). In 1765 Goethe was sent to study law at Leipzig University, where he also cultivated his interests in art and literature. He was exposed to Enlightenment thinkers and the new English literature of sensibility, and he wrote elegant erotic poetry and a pastoral play. After a severe case of tuberculosis in 1768 and a subsequent return to Frankfurt, he continued his studies in Strasbourg in 1770. There he met the young East Prussian writer Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), later a theologian in Weimar. They shared criticism of rationalism and the prevailing French taste and enthusiasm for Jean-Jacques Rousseau, German folk song, and medieval architecture, and each found in Shakespeare and Homer models for original creativity. Goethe graduated in 1771 with a Lizentiat (doctoral degree) and became an attorney for the Frankfurt juridical court; increasingly, though, he devoted his efforts to writing and drawing. He initiated a radically subjective style, commonly referred to as "Sturm und Drang" (storm and stress), that marked the beginning of German Romanticism. He soon became famous across Europe through his love poems, his Shakespearean chronicle play Götz von Berlichingen (published 1773) based on the controversial knight of that name (c. 1480–1562) during the Peasants' War, and his scandalous epistolary novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774; The sufferings of young Werther). In the fall of 1775 young Carl August of Saxe-Weimar (1757–1828) invited Goethe to Weimar. Although his Thuringian duchy was small, it was nonetheless an important cultural center thanks to the endeavors of Carl August's mother, Anna Amalia (1739–1807; regent 1756–1775). In June 1776 Goethe became a member of the duke's cabinet and his privy councillor. Except for Goethe's "flight" to Italy from his many bureaucratic obligations (1786–1788), a journey to Venice (1790), the German campaign against revolutionary France, and shorter travels, he remained in the small province for the rest of his long life. In 1806 he married the lowborn Christiane Vulpius (1765–1816) with whom he had lived since 1788, much to the outrage of Weimar society.

Goethe, best known for his wide range of poetry, plays, and novels, was also a respected administrator, knowledgeable art collector, and successful director of the Weimar Hoftheater (court theater, including opera) from 1791 to 1813. He admired Napoleon and recognized the genius of Beethoven. His interest in the sciences ranged from osteology and botany to optics and mineralogy; he believed strongly in his theory of colors (Zur Farbenlehre; 1810), which contradicted Newton's.

Goethe's extensive correspondence is an endless resource for insights into his intense relationships with contemporaries. Most important was the friendship and collaboration with Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) from 1794 to 1805, when both wrote in a Classicist style and theorized on the central function of art in human life and in society. Their rigorously pedagogical aesthetics met with resistance, and Goethe's own earlier works remained much more popular. Literary history, however, established Goethe's and Schiller's works from those years as Weimar Classicism.

Only very few works from Goethe's rich œuvre can be mentioned here. His poetry was so innovative and is so rich and multifaceted that any mention of single titles does not do justice to it. It ranges from stormy nature and love poems, hymns, classical elegies and satirical epigrams, and ballads, to the idyllic epic poem Hermann und Dorothea (1797) and his adaptation of Oriental traditions in West-Östlicher Divan (1819). Numerous poems have been set to music by composers from Mozart and Schubert to contemporary ones. Dramas such as Egmont (1788), Iphigenia auf Tauris (1787; Iphigenia on Tauris), and Torquato Tasso (1790) draw on (literary) history and mythology for models and reinterpretations of harmonious and autonomous individuals; yet the emotional struggle is merely contained, not overcome, in an equilibrium. Thus the dichotomy between Classicist (recent research prefers this term over "classical" and its hierarchical implications) and Romantic writers is not as sharp as previously believed. The novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795–1796; Wilhelm Meister's apprenticeship years), long regarded as the exemplary German "Bildungsroman" (novel of individual organic development or self formation), was most influential for the Romantics and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in general. Whether the protagonist achieves the alleged goal of character formation and a well-rounded education or whether the novel criticizes and undermines such a goal remains controversial.

Interpretation of Goethe's universal life work situates him within various tendencies of his time, a critical period in the development of the modern world, but also stresses that he anticipated modernist (and even postmodern) fractured structures, especially in his last novel Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, oder Die Entsagenden (1829; Wilhelm Meister's travel years, or the renunciants) where he wrote critically on developments such as industrialization and specialization. Goethe pursued a lifelong interest in the subject of Faust, the sixteenth-century alchemist, scholar, and magician, and rendered the pact-with-the-devil legend into an original tragedy of human striving and complex symbolism of human life, society, and politics. Goethe's Faust (fragment published 1790; Faust, Part I of the tragedy, 1808; Faust, Part II, posthumously 1832) is a masterpiece of world literature; Part II is a plethora of mythology and heterogeneity. Interpretations of it and its influence on literature and music are innumerable. In his autobiographical writings (Dichtung und Wahrheit [Poetry and truth], 1811–1814; Italienische Reise [Italian journey], 1816–1817, 1829, etc.), which were very influential for the genre of autobiography, he styled himself as a German classical writer and Olympian.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Collected Works. Edited by Cyrus Hamlin. Translated by Cyrus Hamlin, Walter Arndt, Michael Hamburger, Frank Ryder, et al. 12 vols. New York, 1983–1988 and 1994–.

——. Faust. Edited by C. Hamlin. Translated by Walter Arndt. New York, 2000. Excellent German/English edition in the Norton Critical Editions Series with extensive notes and introductory and supporting material.

——. Sämtliche Werke, Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche. 39 vols. Frankfurt, 1985–. The most inclusive edition in German available, edited by a wide range of scholars.

Secondary Sources

Boyle, Nicholas. Goethe: The Poet and the Age. 2 vols. Oxford and New York, 1991 and 1999. Interpretative biography.

Boyle, Nicholas, and John Guthrie, eds. Goethe and the English-Speaking World: Essays from the Cambridge Symposium for His 150th Anniversary. Rochester, N.Y., 2002.

Sharpe, Lesley, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Goethe. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 2002. Scholarly yet accessible chapters on his works by genre and on relations to the contemporary world as well as reception.

Wagner, Irmgard. Goethe. New York, 1999. Concise introduction to major literary works.

—WALTRAUD MAIERHOFER

(1749-1832)

Probably the most celebrated of all German writers. Goethe had strong interest in mysticism and occult subjects. He was born at Frankfurt-on-Main, August 28, 1749. His father was a lawyer of some eminence. At an early age the boy showed a persistent fondness for drawing and learned with surprising ease. In 1759 a French nobleman of aesthetic tastes came to stay with the Goethes, and a warm friendship developed between him and the future author. The friendship accelerated young Goethe's intellectual development.

Shortly after this, a French theater was founded at Frankfurt, and there Goethe became conversant with the plays of Racine; he also made some early attempts at original writing and began to learn Italian, Latin, Greek, English, and Hebrew.

He soon moved from his native town to Leipzig, where he entered the university, intending to become a lawyer. At Leipzig, Goethe showed little affection for the actual curriculum; instead he continued in essay writing and drawing and even took lessons in etching. He also found time for a love affair, but this was cut short in 1768 when he developed a serious illness. On his recovery he decided to leave Leipzig and go to Strasbourg.

There he became friendly with Jung-Stilling (see Johann Heinrich Jung), and his taste for letters was strengthened, Homer and Ossian being his favorites among the masters. Although he continued to appear indifferent to the study of law, he succeeded in becoming an advocate in 1771 and returned to Frankfurt.

Goethe had already written a quantity of verse and prose, and he began to write critiques for some of the newspapers in Frankfurt. At the same time he started writing Goetz von Berlichingen and Werther. These works were soon followed by Prometheus, and in 1774 the author began working on Faust.

The following year saw the production of some of Goethe's best love poems, written for Lilli Schönemann, daughter of a Frankfurt banker. Nothing more than poetry, however, resulted from this new devotion. Scarcely had it come and gone before Goethe's whole life was changed, for his writings had become famous. As a result the young duke Carl August of Weimar, anxious for a trusty page, invited the rising author to his court. The invitation was accepted. Goethe became a member of the privy council; subsequently he was raised to the rank of Geheimrat (privy counselor) and then ennobled.

Goethe's life at Weimar was a very busy one. Trusted implicitly by the duke, he directed the construction of public roads and buildings, attended to military and academic affairs, and founded a court theater. As occupied as he was, he continued to write voluminously. Among the most important works he produced during his first years at the duke's court were Iphigenie and Wilhelm Meister.

In 1787 he had a lengthy stay in Italy, visiting Naples, Pompeii, Rome, and Milan. Returning to Weimar, he began writing Egmont. In 1795 he made the acquaintance of poet and dramatist Friedrich von Schiller, with whom he quickly became friendly and with whom he worked on the Horen, a journal designed to elevate the literary tastes of the masses.

About this period, too, Goethe wrote his play Hermann und Dorothea and also began translating Voltaire, Diderot, and Benvenuto Cellini.

(For an account of a strange psychic experience at Weimar, when Goethe saw the projected double of a friend, see double.)

The year 1806 was a significant one in Goethe's life, marked by his marriage and also by the entry of Napoleon into Weimar. The conquering general and the German poet found much in each other to admire, and Napoleon decorated Goethe with the cross of the Legion of Honour.

In 1811 Goethe wrote Dichtung und Wahrheit, Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre; in 1821 he began working at a second part of Faust. During this time he had two famous visitors— Beethoven from Vienna and Thackeray from London. Although the composer thought himself coldly received, the novelist spoke with enthusiasm of the welcome accorded him. Goethe was then well advanced in years, however, and his health was beginning to fail. He died March 22, 1832.

Few great writers—not even Disraeli or Sir Walter Scott— had fuller lives than Goethe. His love affairs, besides those mentioned here, were many, and his early taste for the graphic arts continued to the end of his days, resulting in a vast collection of treasures.

His interest in mysticism manifested itself in various forms besides the writing of Faust. With a temperament aspiring to the unattainable, Goethe's mind was essentially a speculative one. During his childhood at Frankfurt he did symbolic drawings of the soul's aspirations to the deity, and he later became immersed in the study of the Christian religion. Eventually he grew skeptical on this subject, his ideas being altered not only by his own ruminations but by reading various iconoclastic philosophers, especially Rousseau. Later his intellect was seemingly less engaged by Christianity than by ancient Eastern faiths, as demonstrated by some of his works, notably Westöstliche Divan.

One of his notebooks shows that, while a young man at Strasbourg, Goethe made a close study of Giordano Bruno and other early scientists. As a boy he was a keen student of alchemy, reading deeply in Welling, Jean Baptiste van Helmont, Basil Valentine, and Paracelsus, and even fitting up a laboratory where he spent long hours in arduous experiments. No doubt it was while thus engaged that Goethe first conceived the idea of writing a drama on the subject of Faust, and his alchemistic and other scientific research certainly proved advantageous when he was composing that work.

The story's main outlines are visible in Calderon's and Marlowe's versions, as well as in the operas of Gounod, Schumann, and Berlioz. It is mainly because of Faust that Goethe is considered a great mystic, for his rendering of the immortal theme is acknowledged as among the finest in the whole of mystical literature.

Sources:

Cottrell, Alan P., ed. Goethe's Faust: Seven Essays. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1976.

Davidson, Thomas. Philosophy of Goethe's Faust. Boston, 1906. Reprint, Haskell, 1969.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. The Autobiography of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.

Gray, Ronald D. Goethe, the Alchemist: A Study of Alchemical Symbolism in Goethe's Literary & Scientific Works. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952. Reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1979.

Lewes, George H. The Life of Goethe. London, 1864. Reprint, Norwood Editions, 1979.

Reed, T. J. Goethe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Steiner, Rudolph. Goethe's Conception of the World. Reprint, Brooklyn: Haskell, 1972.

——. The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception. Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press, 1978.

(1749–1832). Germany's most distinguished poet and a scientist, Goethe was born in Frankfurt am Main. He made discoveries in comparative anatomy, especially on the skull, and in botany showing that leaves are the characteristic form of which all other parts of plants are variations. He vigorously attacked Newton's theory of light and colour, and although here he was incorrect he did point out important colour contrast effects — 'Goethe's shadows'. These are shadows cast by coloured lights, and they appear the complementary colour of the light. This is a starting point of Edwin Land's retinex theory of colour vision.

Goethe is best known for his Faust (Part I, 1808; Part II, 1832). It is based on the medieval legend of a man who sells his soul to the Devil. This became linked with the name and adventures of a 16th-century conjuror, Johann Faust. According to Goethe, Faust sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for superhuman powers of intellect and wisdom, and the Devil finally failed to claim his part of the bargain — Faust's soul. This story greatly affected Freud in his early years, and it has passed into psychoanalytical folklore.

(Published 1987)

— Richard L. Gregory

Bibliography
• Matthaei, R. (ed.) (1971). Goethe's Colour Theory.
• Williams, J. R. (2001). The Life of Goethe: A Critical Biography.

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Quotes:

"It is only necessary to grow old to become more charitable and even indulgent. I see no fault committed by others that I have not committed myself."

"Rejoice that you have still have a long time to live, before the thought comes to you that there is nothing more in the world to see."

"The older we get the more we must limit ourselves if we wish to be active."

"We must not take the faults of our youth with us into old age, for age brings along its own defects."

"Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children."

"While man's desires and aspirations stir he cannot choose but err."

See more famous quotes by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany's most renown man of letters, was born in Frankfurt am Main the son of Katherine Elisabeth Textor and Johann Kaspar Goethe. He entered the University of Leipzig in 1765 to study law. While there, however, he found he was more interested in art and drama and wrote his first plays shortly before a hemorrhage forced his return home in 1768. Goethe finished his law studies at Strasborg in 1771 and established a practice in Frankfurt. These years became a period of intense change in Goethe's world and the beginning of the amazing literary productivity that characterized his life.

In the early 1770s, Goethe began work on Faust, the work for which he is most remembered. In fact, he worked on it for much of his life. In 1775, he moved to Weimar at the invitation of Duke Karl August. Although he intended to only stay a few months, he resided there for the rest of his life. In 1784 Goethe began his association with Friedreich Schiller at the University of Jena. The two embarked on a conscious program to give German literature a new degree of seriousness and purpose, a program that met with a remarkable level of success. Goethe's 1796 novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre has been described as the most influential work of fiction in German literature. He completed Part I of Faust in 1806 and saw its publication two years later.

Although not a romantic, Goethe was the idol of the emerging German romantic movement and his influence was felt by romantics throughout Europe. One element in their appreciation was his 1797 poem, "The Bride of Corinth." It was one of the earliest modern ventures into poetry based on the vampire theme. Often mistakenly cited as being based on a story in Philostratus, the Life of Apollonius of Tynana, the poem was in fact based on another story from ancient Greece recounted by Phlegon. In it a young woman, Philinnon, returned from the dead to be with her love, Machates.

In his lifetime, Goethe emerged as the most respected man of letters in nineteenth-century Europe. Thus his involvement in the controversy surrounding the publication of the first vampire novella in 1816 was of importance. In that year, The Vampyre appeared in a London magazine under the name of Lord Byron Even before Byron could issue a denial of his connection to the story that was actually written by John Polidori Goethe declared it Byron's greatest work. Goethe, therefore, inadvertently lent his prestige to the erroneous ascription of Polidori's tale to Byron, especially in non-English speaking lands. As late as 1830, it was included in the French edition of Byron's collected works.

In the 1820s, Goethe began work on the second part of Faust, which was completed in 1831. He died the following year.
Frayling, Christopher. Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula. London: Faber and Faber, 1991. 429 pp.

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