Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Life

Early life

Goethe's grandfather, Friedrich Georg Goethe, moved from Thuringia in 1687 and changed the spelling of his surname from Göthe to Goethe. In Frankfurt, he first worked as a tailor, then opened a tavern. His son and grandchildren subsequently lived on the fortune he earned. Friedrich Georg Goethe was married twice; his first marriage was to Anna Elisabeth Lutz, the daughter of a burgher, Sebastian Lutz, with whom he had five children, including Hermann Jakob Goethe. After the death of his first wife in 1705, he married Cornelia Schellhorn, née Walther, widow of the innkeeper Johannes Schellhorn (died 1704), with whom he had four more children, including Johann Caspar Goethe, father of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Goethe's father, Johann Caspar Goethe, lived with his family in a large house (today the Goethe House) in Frankfurt, then a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire. Though he had studied law in Leipzig and had been appointed Imperial Councillor, Johann Caspar Goethe was not involved in the city's official affairs. Johann Caspar married Goethe's mother, Catharina Elisabeth Textor, in Frankfurt on 20 August 1748, when he was 38 and she was 17. All their children, with the exception of Johann Wolfgang and his sister Cornelia Friederica Christiana, died at an early age.

The young Goethe received from his father and private tutors lessons in subjects common at the time, especially languages (Latin, Greek, Biblical Hebrew (briefly), French, Italian, and English). Goethe also received lessons in dancing, riding, and fencing. Johann Caspar, feeling frustrated in his own ambitions, was determined that his children should have every advantage he had missed.

Although Goethe's great passion was drawing, he quickly became interested in literature; Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Homer were among his early favourites. He also had a devotion to the theater, and was greatly fascinated by the puppet shows that were annually arranged by occupying French soldiers at his home and which later became a recurrent theme in his literary work Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.

He also took great pleasure in reading works on history and religion. Of this period, he wrote:

I had from childhood the singular habit of always learning by heart the beginnings of books, and the divisions of a work, first of the five books of Moses, and then of the Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses [...] If an ever active imagination, of which that tale may bear witness, led me hither and thither, if the medley of fable and history, mythology and religion, threatened to bewilder me, I readily fled to those oriental regions, and plunged into the first books of Moses, and there, amid the scattered shepherd tribes, found myself at once in the greatest solitude and the greatest society.

Legal career

Goethe studied law at Leipzig University from 1765 to 1768. He detested learning judicial rules by heart, preferring instead to attend the lessons of the university professor and poet Christian Fürchtegott Gellert. In Leipzig, Goethe fell in love with Anna Katharina Schönkopf, the daughter of a craftsman and innkeeper, writing cheerful verses about her in the Rococo genre. In 1770, he released anonymously his first collection of poems, Annette. His uncritical admiration for many contemporary poets evaporated as he developed an interest in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Christoph Martin Wieland. By this time, Goethe had already written a great deal, but he discarded nearly all of these works except for the comedy Die Mitschuldigen. The inn Auerbachs Keller and its legend of Johann Georg Faust's 1525 barrel ride impressed him so much that Auerbachs Keller became the only real place in his closet drama Faust Part One. Given that he was making little progress in his formal studies, Goethe was forced to return to Frankfurt at the end of August 1768.

Back in Frankfurt, Goethe became severely ill. During the year and a half that followed, marked by several relapses, relations with his father worsened. During convalescence, Goethe was nursed by his mother and sister. In April 1770, Goethe left Frankfurt to finish his studies, this time at the University of Strasbourg.

In Alsace, Goethe blossomed. No other landscape was to be described by him as affectionately as the warm, wide Rhineland. In Strasbourg, Goethe met Johann Gottfried Herder. The two became close friends, and crucially to Goethe's intellectual development, Herder kindled his interest in William Shakespeare, Ossian and in the notion of Volkspoesie (folk poetry). On 14 October 1772, Goethe hosted a gathering in his parents' home in honour of the first German "Shakespeare Day". His first acquaintance with Shakespeare's works is described as his personal awakening in the field of literature.

On a trip to the village of Sessenheim in October 1770, Goethe fell in love with Friederike Brion, but the tryst ended in August 1771. Several of Goethe's poems, like "Willkommen und Abschied", "Sesenheimer Lieder" and "Heidenröslein", date to this period.

At the end of August 1771, Goethe acquired the academic degree of the Licentiate in Law from Strasbourg and was able to establish a small legal practice in Frankfurt. Although in his academic work he had given voice to an ambition to make jurisprudence progressively more humane, his inexperience led him to proceed too vigorously in his first cases, for which he was reprimanded and lost further clientele. Within a few months, this put an early end to his law career. Around this time, Goethe became acquainted with the court of Darmstadt, where his inventiveness was praised. It was from that world that there came Johann Georg Schlosser (who later became Goethe's brother-in-law) and Johann Heinrich Merck. Goethe also pursued literary plans again; this time, his father did not object and even helped. Goethe obtained a copy of the biography of a noble highwayman from the German Peasants' War. In a couple of weeks, the biography was reworked into a colourful drama titled Götz von Berlichingen, and the work struck a chord among Goethe's contemporaries.

Early years in Weimar

In 1775, on the strength of his fame as the author of The Sorrows of Young Werther, Goethe was invited to the court of Karl August, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, who later became Grand Duke in 1815. The Duke's mother, Duchess Anna Amalia, had been the long-time regent on behalf of her son until 1775 and was one of the most important patrons of the arts in her day, making her court into a centre of the arts. Her court had hosted the renowned theatre company of Abel Seyler until a 1774 fire had destroyed Schloss Weimar. Karl August came of age when he turned eighteen in 1775, although his mother continued to be a major presence at the court. So it was that Goethe took up residence in Weimar, where he remained for the rest of his life and where, over the course of many years, he held a succession of offices, including superintendent of the ducal library. He was, moreover, the Duke's friend and chief adviser.

In 1776, Goethe formed a close relationship with Charlotte von Stein, a married woman seven years older than him. The intimate bond with her lasted for ten years, after which Goethe abruptly left for Italy without giving his companion any notice. She was emotionally distraught at the time, but they were eventually reconciled.

Aside from his official duties, Goethe was also a friend and confidant to Duke Karl August and participated in the activities of the court. For Goethe, his first ten years at Weimar could well be described as a garnering of a degree and range of experiences which perhaps could have been achieved in no other way. In 1779, Goethe took on the War Commission of the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar, in addition to the Mines and Highways commissions. In 1782, when the Duchy's chancellor of the Exchequer left his office, Goethe agreed to act in his place and did so for two and a half years; this post virtually made him prime minister and the principal representative of the Duchy. Goethe was ennobled in 1782 (hence the particle "von" in his name). In that same year, Goethe moved into what would be his primary residence in Weimar for the next 50 years.

As head of the Saxe-Weimar War Commission, Goethe participated in the recruitment of mercenaries into the Prussian and British military during the American Revolution. The author Daniel Wilson claims that Goethe engaged in negotiating the forced sale of vagabonds, criminals, and political dissidents as part of these activities.

Italy

Goethe's journey to the Italian peninsula and Sicily from 1786 to 1788 was of great significance in his aesthetic and philosophical development. His father had made a similar journey, and his example was a major motivating factor for Goethe to make the trip. More importantly, however, the work of Johann Joachim Winckelmann had provoked a general renewed interest in the classical art of ancient Greece and Rome. Thus, Goethe's journey had something of the nature of a pilgrimage to it. During the course of his trip, Goethe met and befriended the artists Angelica Kauffman and Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, as well as encountering such notable characters as Lady Hamilton and Alessandro Cagliostro.

He also journeyed to Sicily during this time, and wrote that "To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is to not have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything." While in Southern Italy and Sicily, Goethe encountered, for the first time genuine Greek (as opposed to Roman) architecture, and was quite startled by its relative simplicity. Winckelmann had not recognized the distinctness of the two styles.

Goethe's diaries of this period form the basis of the non-fiction Italian Journey. Italian Journey only covers the first year of Goethe's visit. The remaining year is largely undocumented, aside from the fact that he spent much of it in Venice. This "gap in the record" has been the source of much speculation over the years.

In the decades which immediately followed its publication in 1816, Italian Journey inspired countless German youths to follow Goethe's example. This is pictured, somewhat satirically, in George Eliot's Middlemarch.

Weimar

In late 1792, Goethe took part in the Battle of Valmy against revolutionary France, assisting Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach during the failed invasion of France. Again, during the Siege of Mainz, he assisted Karl August as a military observer. His written account of these events can be found within his Complete Works.

In 1794, Friedrich Schiller wrote to Goethe offering friendship; they had previously had only a mutually wary relationship ever since first becoming acquainted in 1788. This collaborative friendship lasted until Schiller's death in 1805.

In 1806, Goethe was living in Weimar with his mistress Christiane Vulpius, the sister of Christian A. Vulpius and daughter of archivist Johann Friedrich Vulpius, and their son August von Goethe. On 13 October, Napoleon's army invaded the town. The French "spoon guards", the least disciplined soldiers, occupied Goethe's house: The "spoon guards" had broken in, they had drunk wine, made a great uproar and called for the master of the house. Goethe's secretary Riemer reports: "Although already undressed and wearing only his wide nightgown [...] he descended the stairs towards them and inquired what they wanted from him [...] His dignified figure, commanding respect, and his spiritual mien seemed to impress even them". But it was not to last long. Late at night, they burst into his bedroom with drawn bayonets. Goethe was petrified, Christiane raised a lot of noise and even tangled with them, other people who had taken refuge in Goethe's house rushed in, and so the marauders eventually withdrew again. It was Christiane who commanded and organized the defence of the house on the Frauenplan. The barricading of the kitchen and the cellar against the wild pillaging soldiery was her work. Goethe noted in his diary: "Fires, rapine, a frightful night [...] Preservation of the house through steadfastness and luck." The luck was Goethe's, the steadfastness was displayed by Christiane.

Days afterward, on 19 October 1806, Goethe legitimized their 18-year relationship by marrying Christiane in a quiet marriage service at the Jakobskirche in Weimar. They had already had several children together by this time, including their son, Julius August Walter von Goethe (1789–1830), whose wife, Ottilie von Pogwisch, cared for the elder Goethe until his death in 1832. August and Ottilie had three children: Walther Wolfgang Freiherr von Goethe (1818–1885), Wolfgang Maximilian von Goethe (1820–1883) and Alma Sedina Henriette Cornelia von Goethe (1827–1844). Christiane von Goethe died in 1816. Johann reflected, "There is nothing more charming to see than a mother with her child in her arms, and there is nothing more venerable than a mother among a number of her children."

Later life

After 1793, Goethe devoted his endeavours primarily to literature. In 1812, he travelled to Teplice and Vienna, both times meeting his admirer Ludwig van Beethoven, who had set music to Egmont two years prior in 1810. By 1820, Goethe was on amiable terms with Kaspar Maria von Sternberg.

In 1821, having recovered from a near fatal heart illness, the 72-year-old Goethe fell in love with Ulrike von Levetzow, 17 at the time. In 1823, he wanted to marry her, but because of the opposition of her mother, he never proposed. Their last meeting in Carlsbad on 5 September 1823 inspired his poem "Marienbad Elegy" which he considered one of his finest works. During that time he also developed a deep emotional bond with the Polish pianist Maria Szymanowska, 33 at the time, and she separated from her husband.

In 1821, Goethe's friend Carl Friedrich Zelter introduced him to the 12-year-old Felix Mendelssohn. Goethe, now in his seventies, was greatly impressed by the child, leading to perhaps the earliest confirmed comparison to Mozart in the following conversation between Goethe and Zelter:

"Musical prodigies [...] are probably no longer so rare; but what this little man can do in extemporizing and playing at sight borders the miraculous, and I could not have believed it possible at so early an age." "And yet you heard Mozart in his seventh year at Frankfurt?" said Zelter. "Yes", answered Goethe, "[...] but what your pupil already accomplishes, bears the same relation to the Mozart of that time that the cultivated talk of a grown-up person bears to the prattle of a child."

Mendelssohn was invited to meet Goethe on several later occasions, and set a number of Goethe's poems to music. His other compositions inspired by Goethe include the overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage (Op. 27, 1828), and the cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night, Op. 60, 1832).

Heinrich Heine, on his hiking tour through Germany (the trip immortalised in his work Die Harzreise) was granted an audience with Goethe in 1824 in Weimar. Heine had been a great admirer of Goethe's in his early youth, sending him some of his earlier works with praising cover notes. The meeting is said to be of a strikingly unsuccessful nature, with Heine completely omitting the meeting in the Harzreise, and speaking flippantly of it in much later life.

Death

In 1832, Goethe died in Weimar of apparent heart failure. He is buried in the Ducal Vault at Weimar's Historical Cemetery.

Last words

The last words of Goethe are usually abridged as Mehr Licht!, that is, "more light!", although the original quote was longer.

The earliest known account was of Karl Wilhelm Müller's, which gives all of his last words: "Macht doch den zweiten Fensterladen in der Stube auch auf, damit mehr Licht hereinkomme." ("Open the second shutter in the living room so that more light comes in.")

According to his doctor Carl Vogel, his last words were, Mehr Licht! (More light!), but this is disputed as Vogel was not in the room at the moment Goethe died, something he himself says in his account: "[...] "More light" is said to have been the last words of the man, who always hated darkness in every respect, as I had left the dying room for a moment [...]"

Thomas Carlyle, in his letter to John Carlyle (2 July 1832) records that he had learned the version Macht die Fensterladen auf, damit ich mehr Licht bekomme! ("Open the shutters so I can get more light!") from Sarah Austin: "[...] Mrs. Austin wrote lately that Goethe's last words were, Macht die Fensterladen auf, damit ich mehr Licht bekomme! Glorious man! Happy man! I never think of him but with reverence and pride [...]" John Ruskin, in his Præterita, narrates a memory of him from his diary record of 25 October 1874 that Carlyle "[...] had been quoting the last words of Goethe, "Open the window, let us have more light" (this about an hour before painless death, his eyes failing him)."

Even though the context was different, these words, especially the abridged version, which turned into a dictum, are usually used as a means to illustrate the pro-Enlightenment worldview of Goethe.

Aftermath

The first production of Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin took place in Weimar in 1850. The conductor was Franz Liszt, who chose the date 28 August in honour of Goethe, who was born on 28 August 1749.

Descendants

Goethe had five children with Christiane Vulpius. Only their eldest son, August, survived into adulthood. One child was stillborn, while the others died early. Through his son August and daughter-in-law Ottilie, Johann had three grandchildren: Walther, Wolfgang and Alma. Alma died of typhoid fever during the outbreak in Vienna, at age 16. Walther and Wolfgang neither married nor had any children. Walther's gravestone states: "With him ends Goethe's dynasty, the name will last forever," marking the end of Goethe's personal bloodline. While he has no direct descendants, his siblings do.

Literary work

The most important of Goethe's works produced before he went to Weimar were Götz von Berlichingen (1773), a tragedy that was the first work to bring him recognition, and the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (German: Die Leiden des jungen Werthers) (1774), which gained him enormous fame as a writer in the Sturm und Drang period which marked the early phase of Romanticism. Indeed, Werther is often considered to be the "spark" which ignited the movement, and can arguably be called the world's first "best-seller". During the years at Weimar before he met Schiller in 1794, he began Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and wrote the dramas Iphigenie auf Tauris (Iphigenia in Tauris), Egmont, and Torquato Tasso and the fable Reineke Fuchs.

To the period of his friendship with Schiller belong the conception of Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years (the continuation of Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship), the idyll of Hermann and Dorothea, the Roman Elegies and the verse drama The Natural Daughter. In the last period, between Schiller's death, in 1805, and his own, appeared Faust Part One (1808), Elective Affinities (1809), the West-Eastern Diwan (an 1819 collection of poems in the Persian style, influenced by the work of Hafez), his autobiographical Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit (From My Life: Poetry and Truth, published between 1811 and 1833) which covers his early life and ends with his departure for Weimar, his Italian Journey (1816–1817), and a series of treatises on art. Faust, Part Two was completed before his 1832 death and published posthumously later that year. His writings were immediately influential in literary and artistic circles.

Goethe was fascinated by Kalidasa's Abhijñānaśākuntalam, which was one of the first works of Sanskrit literature that became known in Europe, after being translated from English to German.

Details of selected works

The short epistolary novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, or The Sorrows of Young Werther, published in 1774, recounts an unhappy romantic infatuation that ends in suicide. Goethe admitted that he "shot his hero to save himself", a reference to Goethe's near-suicidal obsession for a young woman, a passion he quelled through writing. The novel remains in print in dozens of languages and its influence is undeniable; its central hero, an obsessive figure driven to despair and destruction by his unrequited love for the young Lotte, has become a pervasive literary archetype. The fact that Werther ends with the protagonist's suicide and funeral — a funeral which "no clergyman attended" — made the book deeply controversial upon its (anonymous) publication, for it appeared to condone and glorify suicide. Suicide is considered sinful by Christian doctrine, and suicides were denied Christian burial, with the bodies often mutilated. The suicide's property was often confiscated by the Church.

Epistolary novels were common during this time, letter-writing being a primary mode of communication. What set Goethe's book apart from other such novels was its expression of unbridled longing for a joy beyond possibility, its sense of defiant rebellion against authority, and of principal importance, its total subjectivity: qualities that trailblazed the Romantic movement.

The next work, his epic closet drama Faust, was completed in stages. The first part was published in 1808 and created a sensation. Goethe finished Faust Part Two in the year of his death, and the work was published posthumously. Goethe's original draft of a Faust play, which probably dates from 1773 to 1774, and is now known as the Urfaust, was also published after his death.

The first operatic version of Goethe's Faust, by Louis Spohr, appeared in 1814. The work subsequently inspired operas and oratorios by Schumann, Berlioz, Gounod, Boito, Busoni and Schnittke, as well as symphonic works by Liszt, Wagner and Mahler. Faust became the ur-myth of many figures in the 19th century. Later, a facet of its plot, i.e., of selling one's soul to the devil for power over the physical world, took on increasing literary importance and became a view of the victory of technology and of industrialism, along with its dubious human expenses. In 1919, the world premiere complete production of Faust was staged at the Goetheanum.

Scientific work

As to what I have done as a poet [...] I take no pride in it [...] But that in my century I am the only person who knows the truth in the difficult science of colours — of that, I say, I am not a little proud, and here I have a consciousness of a superiority to many.

Although his literary work has attracted the most interest, Goethe was also keenly involved in studies of natural science. He wrote several works on morphology and colour theory. In the 1790s, he undertook Galvanic experiments and studied anatomical issues together with Alexander von Humboldt. He also had the largest private collection of minerals in all of Europe. By the time of his death, to gain a comprehensive view of geology, he had collected 17,800 rock samples.

His focus on morphology and what was later called homology influenced 19th-century naturalists, although his ideas of transformation were about the continuous metamorphosis of living things and did not relate to contemporary ideas of "transformisme" or transmutation of species. Homology, or as Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire called it "analogie", was used by Charles Darwin as strong evidence of common descent and of laws of variation. Goethe's studies (notably with an elephant's skull lent to him by Samuel Thomas von Soemmerring) led him to independently discover the human intermaxillary bone, also known as "Goethe's bone", in 1784, which Broussonet (1779) and Vicq d'Azyr (1780) had (using different methods) identified several years earlier. While not the only one in his time to question the prevailing view that this bone did not exist in humans, Goethe, who believed ancient anatomists had known about this bone, was the first to prove its existence in all mammals. The elephant's skull that led Goethe to this discovery, and was subsequently named the Goethean Elephant, is displayed in the Ottoneum in Kassel, Germany.

During his Italian journey, Goethe formulated a theory of plant metamorphosis in which the archetypal form of the plant is to be found in the leaf – he writes, "from top to bottom a plant is all leaf, united so inseparably with the future bud that one cannot be imagined without the other". In 1790, he published his Metamorphosis of Plants. As one of the many precursors in the history of evolutionary thought, Goethe wrote in Story of My Botanical Studies (1831):

The ever-changing display of plant forms, which I have followed for so many years, awakens increasingly within me the notion: The plant forms which surround us were not all created at some given point in time and then locked into the given form, they have been given [...] a felicitous mobility and plasticity that allows them to grow and adapt themselves to many different conditions in many different places.

Eroticism

Many of Goethe's works, especially Faust, the Roman Elegies, and the Venetian Epigrams, depict erotic passions and acts. For instance, in Faust, the first use of Faust's power after signing a contract with the Devil is to seduce a teenage girl. Some of the Venetian Epigrams were held back from publication due to their sexual content. Goethe clearly saw human sexuality as a topic worthy of poetic and artistic depiction, an idea that was uncommon in a time when the private nature of sexuality was rigorously normative.

In a conversation on 7 April 1830, Goethe stated that pederasty is an "aberration" that easily leads to "animal, roughly material" behaviour. He continued, "Pederasty is as old as humanity itself, and one can therefore say that it resides in nature, even if it proceeds against nature [...] What culture has won from nature will not be surrendered or given up at any price." In one of his epigrams, which are often facetious and satirical, he wrote: "I love boys as well, but girls are even dearer to me. If I tire of her as a girl, she'll serve as a boy for me as well".

Religion and politics

Goethe was a freethinker who believed that one could be inwardly Christian without following any of the Christian churches, many of whose central teachings he firmly opposed, sharply distinguishing between Jesus and the tenets of Christian theology and criticizing its history as a "hodgepodge of mistakes and violence". His own descriptions of his relationship to the Christian faith and even to the Church varied widely and have been interpreted even more widely, so that while Goethe's secretary Eckermann portrayed him as enthusiastic about Christianity, Jesus, Martin Luther, and the Protestant Reformation, even calling Christianity the "ultimate religion", on one occasion Goethe described himself as "not anti-Christian, nor un-Christian, but most decidedly non-Christian," and in his Venetian Epigram 66, Goethe listed the symbol of the cross among the four things that he most disliked. According to Nietzsche, Goethe had "a kind of almost joyous and trusting fatalism" that has "faith that only in the totality everything redeems itself and appears good and justified."

Born into a Lutheran family, Goethe's early faith was shaken by news of such events as the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and the Seven Years' War. A year before his death, in a letter to Sulpiz Boisserée, Goethe wrote that he had the feeling that all his life he had been aspiring to qualify as one of the Hypsistarians, an ancient sect of the Black Sea region who, in his understanding, sought to reverence, as being close to the Godhead, what came to their knowledge of the best and most perfect. Goethe's unorthodox religious beliefs led him to be called "the great heathen" and provoked distrust among the authorities of his time, who opposed the creation of a Goethe monument on account of his offensive religious creed. August Wilhelm Schlegel considered Goethe "a heathen who converted to Islam."

Goethe showed interest in other religions, including Islam, although Karic suggests that attempts to claim Goethe for any religion "is a pointless, Sisyphean task". At age 23, Goethe wrote a poem about a river, originally part of a dramatic dialogue, which he published as a separate work called Mahomets Gesang ("Muhammad's Song"). The poem's depiction of nature and forces within it is consonant with his Sturm und Drang years. In 1819, he published his West–östlicher Divan to ignite a poetic dialogue between East and West.

Politically, Goethe described himself as a "moderate liberal". He was critical of the radicalism of Jeremy Bentham and expressed sympathy for the liberalism of François Guizot. At the time of the French Revolution, he thought the enthusiasm of the students and professors to be a perversion of their energy and remained skeptical of the ability of the masses to govern. Goethe sympathized with the American Revolution and later wrote a poem in which he declared, "America, you're better off than our continent, the old." He did not join in the anti-Napoleonic mood of 1812, and he distrusted the strident nationalism which started to be expressed. The medievalism of the Heidelberg Romantics was also repellent to Goethe's eighteenth-century ideal of a supra-national culture.

Influence

In a letter written to Leopold Casper in 1932, Einstein wrote that he admired Goethe as "a poet without peer, and as one of the smartest and wisest men of all time". He goes on to say, "even his scholarly ideas deserve to be held in high esteem, and his faults are those of any great man".

Goethe had a breadth of influence on the nineteenth century, which in many respects has woven itself into the fabric of ideas which have now become widespread. He produced volumes of poetry, essays, criticism, a theory of colours and early work on evolution and linguistics. He was fascinated by mineralogy, and the mineral goethite (iron oxide) is named after him. His non-fiction writings, most of which are philosophic and aphoristic in nature, spurred the development of many thinkers, including Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernst Cassirer, and Carl Jung. Along with Schiller, he was one of the leading figures of Weimar Classicism. Schopenhauer cited Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship as one of the four greatest novels ever written, along with Tristram Shandy, La Nouvelle Héloïse and Don Quixote. Nietzsche wrote, "Four pairs it was that did not deny themselves to my sacrifice: Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau, Pascal and Schopenhauer. With these I must come to terms when I have long wandered alone; they may call me right and wrong; to them will I listen when in the process they call each other right and wrong."

Goethe embodied many of the contending strands in art over the next century: his work could be lushly emotional, and rigorously formal, brief and epigrammatic, and epic. He would argue that Classicism was the means of controlling art, and that Romanticism was a sickness, even as he penned poetry rich in memorable images, and rewrote the formal rules of German poetry. His poetry was set to music by almost every major Austrian and German composer from Mozart to Mahler, and his influence would spread to French drama and opera as well. Beethoven declared that a "Faust" Symphony would be the greatest thing for art. Liszt and Mahler both created symphonies in whole or in large part inspired by this seminal work, which would give the 19th century one of its most paradigmatic figures: Doctor Faustus.

The Faust tragedy/drama, often called Das Drama der Deutschen (the drama of the Germans), written in two parts and published decades apart, would stand as his most characteristic and famous artistic creation. Followers of the twentieth century esotericist Rudolf Steiner built a theatre named the Goetheanum after him — where festival performances of Faust are still performed.

Books related to Goethe

Biermann, Berthold (ed.).Goethe's World: As Seen in Letters and Memoirs;

Boyle, Nicholas. Goethe: The Poet and the Age (2 vols.);

Brandes, Georg. Wolfgang Goethe. New York: Crown Publishers, 1936;

Eckermann, Johann Peter. Conversations with Goethe;

Eissler, Kurt R.. Goethe: A Psychoanalytic Study;

Friedenthal, Richard. Goethe: His Life and Times;

Goethe-Wörterbuch (Goethe Dictionary, abbreviated GWb). Stuttgart. Kohlhammer Verlag. ISBN 978-3-17-019121-1;

Hammer, Carl Jr. Goethe and Rousseau: Resonances of their Mind.

Holm-Hadulla, Rainer Matthias. Goethe's Path to Creativity: A Psycho-Biography of the Eminent Politician, Scientist and Poet, New York: Routledge, 2019. ISBN 9780429459535;

Lewes, George Henry. The Life of Goethe;

Ludwig, Emil. Goethe: The History of a Man;

Mann, Thomas. Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns;

Nicholls, Angus. Goethe's Concept of the Daemonic: After the Ancients;

Pagel, Louis. Doctor Faustus of the Popular Legend: Marlowe, the Puppet-Play, Goethe, and Lenau: Treated Historically and Critically: a Parallel between Goethe and Schiller: an Historic Outline of German Literature. 1883;