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ResearchCOPAC UK: GoetheLibrary of Canada: GoetheLibrary of Congress: GoetheOther Library Catalogs: GoetheBiographicalGerman poet, dramatist and philosopher, was born at Frankfurt-on-Main on. the 28th of August 1749. He came, on his father's side, of Thuringian stock, his great-grandfather, Hans Christian Goethe, having been a farrier at Artern-on-the-Unstrut, about the middle of the I7th century. Hans Christian's son, Friedrich Georg, was brought up to the trade of a tailor, and in this capacity settled in Frankfort in 1686. A second marriage, however, brought him into possession of the Frankfort inn, "Zum Weidenhof," and he ended his days as a well-to-do innkeeper. His son, Johann Kaspar, the poet's father (1710-1782), studied law at Leipzig, and, after going through the prescribed courses of practical training at Wetzlar, travelled in Italy. He hoped, on his return to Frankfort, to obtain an official position in the government of the free city, but his personal influence with the authorities was not sufficiently strong. In his disappointment he resolved never again to offer his services to his native town, and retired into private life, a course which his ample means facilitated. In 1742 he acquired, as a consolation for the public career he had missed, the title of kaiserlicher Rat, and in 1748 married Katharina Elisabeth (1731-1808), daughter of the Schuitheiss or Burgermeister of Frankfort, Johann Wolfgang Textor. The poet was the eldest son of this union. Of the later children only one, Cornelia, born in 1750, survived the years of childhood; she died as the wife of Goethe's friend, J. G. Schlosser, in 1777. The best elements in Goethe's genius came from his mother's side; of a lively, impulsive disposition, and gifted with remarkable imaginative power, Frau Rat was the ideal mother of a poet; moreover, being hardly eighteen at the time of her son's birth, she was herself able to be the companion of his childhood. From his father, whose stern, somewhat pedantic nature repelled warmer feelings on the part of the children, Goethe inherited that "holy earnestness" and stability of character which brought him unscathed through temptations and passions, and held the balance to his all too powerful imagination.
Unforgettable is the picture which the poet subsequently drew of his childhood spent in the large house with its many nooks and crannies, in the Grosse Hirschgraben at Frankfort. Books, pictures, objects of art, antiquities, reminiscences of Rat Goethe's visit to Italy, above all a marionette theatre, kindled the child's quick intellect and imagination. His training was conducted in its early stages by his father, and was later supplemented by tutors. Meanwhile the varied and picturesque life of Frankfort was in itself an education. In 1759, during the Seven Years' War, the French, as Maria Theresa's allies, occupied the town, and, much to the irritation of Goethe's father, who was a stanch partisan of Frederick the Great, a French lieutenant, Count Thoranc, was quartered on the Goethe household. The foreign occupation also led to the establishment of a French troupe of actors, and to their performances the boy, through his grandfather's influence, had free access. Goethe has also recorded his memories of another picturesque event, the coronation of the emperor Joseph II in the Frankfort Romer or town hall in 1764; but these memories were darkened by being associated in his mind with the tragic denouement of his first love affair. The object of this passion was a certain Gretchen, who seems to have taken advantage of the boy's interest in her to further the dishonest ends of one of her friends. The discovery of the affair and the investigation that followed cooled Goethe's ardour and caused him to turn his attention seriously to the studies which were to prepare him for the university. Meanwhile the literary instinct had begun to show itself; we hear of a novel in letters - a kind of linguistic exercise, in which the characters carried on the correspondence in different languages - of a prose epic on the subject of Joseph, and various religious poems of which one,
Die Holienfahrt Chrisli, found its way in a revised form into the poet's complete works.
In October I765, Goethe, then a little over sixteen, left Frankfort for Leipzig, where a wider and, in many respects, less provincial life awaited him. He entered upon his university studies with zeal, but his own education in Fran.kfort had not been the best preparation for the scholastic methods which still dominated the German universities; of his professors, only Gellert seems to have won his interest, and that interest was soon exhausted. The literary beginnings he had made in Frankfort now seemed to him amateurish and trivial; he felt that he had to turn over a new leaf, and, under the guidance of E. W. Behrisch, a genial, original comrade, he learned the art of writing those light Anacreontic lyrics which harmonized with the tone of polite Leipzig society. Artificial as this poetry is, Goethe was, nevertheless, inspired by a real passion in Leipzig, namely, for Anna Katharina Schonkopf, the daughter of a wine-merchant at whose house he dined. She is the "Annette" after whom the recently discovered collection of lyrics was named, although it must be added that neither these lyrics nor the
Neue Lieder, published in 1770, express very directly Goethe's feelings for Khthchen Schonkopf. To his Leipzig student-days belong also two small plays in
Alexandrines, Die Laune des Verliebten, a pastoral comedy in one act, which reflects the lighter side of the poet's love affair, and
Die Mitschuldigen (published in a revised form, 1769), a more sombre picture, in which comedy is incongruously mingled with tragedy. In Leipzig Goethe also had time for what remained one of the abiding interests of his life, for art; he regarded A. F. Oeser (1717-1799), the director of the academy of painting in the Pleisseriburg, who had given him lessons in drawing, as the teacher who in Leipzig had influenced him most. His art studies were also furthered by a short visit to Dresden. His stay in Leipzig came, however, to an abrupt conclusion; the distractions of student life proved too much for his strength; a sudden haemorrhage supervened, and he lay long ill, first in Leipzig, and, after it was possible to remove him, at home in Frankfort. These months of slow recovery were a time of serious introspection for Goethe. He still corresponded with his Leipzig friends, but the tone of his letters changed; life had become graver and more earnest for him. He pored over books on occult philosophy; he busied himself with alchemy and astrology. A friend of his mother's, Susanne Katharina von Klettenberg, who belonged to pietist circles in Frankfort, turned the boy's thoughts to religious mysticism. On his recovery his father resolved that he should complete his legal studies at Strassburg, a city which, although then outside the German empire, was, in respect of language and culture, wholly German. From the first moment Goethe set foot in the narrow streets of the Alsatian capital, in April 1770, the whole current of his thought seemed to change. The Gothic architecture of the Strassburg minster became to him the symbol of a national and German ideal, directly antagonistic to the French tastes and the classical and rationalistic atmosphere that prevailed in Leipzig. The second moment of importance in Goethe's Strassburg period was his meeting with Herder, who spent some weeks in. Strassburg undergoing an operation of the eye. In this thinker, who was his senior by five years, Goethe found the master he sought; Herder taught him the significance of Gothic architecture, revealed to him the charm of nature's simplicity, and inspired him with enthusiasm for
Shakespeare and the Volkslied. Meanwhile Goethe's legal studies were not neglected, and he found time to add to knowledge of other subjects, notably that of medicine. Another factor of importance in. Goethe's Strassburg life was his love for Friederike Brion, the daughter of an Alsatian village pastor in Sesenheim. Even more than Herder's precept and example, this passion showed Goethe how trivial and artificial had been the Anacreontic and pastoral poetry with which he had occupied himself in Leipzig; and the lyrics inspired by Friederike, such as
Kleine Blumen, kleine Blätter and
Wie herrlich leuchtet mir die Natur, mark the beginning of a new epoch in German lyric poetry. The idyll of Sesenheim, as described in
Dichiung und Wahrheil, is one of the most beautiful love-stories in the literature of the world. From the first, however, it was clear that Friederike Erion could never become the wife of the Frankfort patrician's son; an unhappy ending to the romance was unavoidable, and, as is to be seen in passionate outpourings like the
Wanderers Sturmlied, and in the bitter self-accusations of Clavigo, it left deep wounds on the poet's sensitive soul.
To Strassburg we owe Goethe's first important drama,
Gotz von Berlic/tingen, or, as it was called in its earliest form,
Geschichte Gottfriedens von Berlichingen dramatisiert (not published until 1831). Revised under the now familiar title, it appeared in 1773, after Goethe's return to Frankfort. In estimating this drama we must bear in mind Goethe's own Strassburg life, and the turbulent spirit of his own age, rather than the historical facts, which the poet found in the autobiography of his hero published in 1731. The latter supplied only the rough materials; the Gotz von Berlichingen whom Goethe drew, with his lofty ideals of right and wrong, and his enthusiasm for freedom, is a very different personage from the unscrupulous robber-knight of the 16th century, the rough friend of Franz von Sickingen and of the revolting peasants. Still less historical justification is to be found for the vacillating Weisslingen in whom Goethe executed poetic justice on himself as the lover of Friederike, or in the women of the play, the gentle Maria, the heartless Adeiheid. But there is genial, creative power in the very subjectivity of these characters, and a vigorous dramatic life, which is irresistible in its appeal. With GotI von Berlichingen,
Shakespeare's art first triumphed on the German stage, and the literary movement known as
Sturm und Drang was inaugurated.
Having received his degree in Strassburg, Goethe returned borne in August 1771, and began his initiation into the routine of an advocate's profession. In the following year, in order to gain insight into another side of his calling, he spent four months at Wetzlar, where the imperial law-courts were established. But Goethe's professional duties had only a small share in the eventful years which lay between his return from Strassburg and that visit to Weimar at the end of 1775, which turned the whole course of his career, and resulted in his permanent attachment to the Weimar court. Goethe's life in Frankfort was a round of stimulating literary intercourse; in J. H. Merck (1741-1191), an army official in the neighbouring town of Darmstadt, he found a friend and mentor, whose irony and common-sense served as a corrective to his own exuberance of spirits. Wetzlar brought new friends and another passion, that for Charlotte Buff, the daughter of the Amimann there - a love-story which has been immortalized in Wert hers Leiden - and again the young poet's nature was obsessed by a love which was this time strong enough to bring him to the brink of that suicide with which the novel ends. A visit to the Rhine, where new interests and the attractions of Maximiliane von Laroche, a daughter of Wieland's friend, the novelist Sophie von Laroche, brought partial healing; his intense preoccupation with literary work on his return to Frankfort did the rest. In 1775 Goethe was attracted by still another type of woman, Lili Schonemann, whose mother was the widow of a wealthy Frankfort banker. A formal betrothal took place, and the beauty of the lyrics which Lili inspired leaves no room for doubt that here was a passion no less genuine than that for Friederike or Charlotte. But Goethe - more worldly wise than on former occasions - felt instinctively that the gay, social world in which Lili moved was not really congenial to him. A visit to Switzerland in the summer of 1775 may not have weakened his interest in her, but it at least allowed him to regard her objectively; and, without tragic consequences on either side, the passion was ultimately allowed to yield to the dictates of common-sense. Goethe's departure for Weimar in November made the final break less difficult.
The period from 1771 to 1775 was, in literary respects, the most productive of the poet's life. It had been inaugurated with
Gotz von Berlichingen, and a few months later this tragedy was followed by another,
Clavigo, hardly less convincing in its character-drawing, and reflecting even more faithfully than the former the experiences Goethe had gone through in Strassburg. Again poetic justice is effected on the unfortunate hero who has chosen his own personal advancement in preference to his duty to the woman he loves; more pointedly than in
Gotz is the moral enforced by Clavigo's worldly friend Carlos, that the ground of Clavigo's tragic end lies not so much in the defiance of a moral law as in the hero's vacillation and Want of character. With
Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774), the literary precipitate of the author's own experiences in Wetzlar, Goethe succeeded in attracting, as no German had done before him, the attention of Europe. Once more it was the gospel that the world belongs to the strong, which lay beneath the surface of this romance. This, however, was not the lesson which was drawn from it by Goethe's contemporaries; they shed tears of sympathy over the lovelorn youth whose burden becomes too great for him to bear. While Goethe inaugurated the manlier side of the
Sturm und Drang literature,
Werther was responsible for its sentimental excesses. And to the sentimental rather than to the heroic side belongs also
Stella, "a drama for lovers," in which the poet again reproduced, if with less fidelity than in
Werther, certain aspects of his own love troubles. A lighter vein is to be observed in various dramatic satires written at this time, such as
Gotter, Helden und Wieland (1774) and
Claudine von Villa Bella (1776); while in the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeiger (1772-1773), Goethe drove home the principles of the new movement of
Sturm und Drang in terse and pointed criticism. The exuberance of the young poet's genius is also to be seen in the many unfinished fragments of this period; at one time we find him occupied with dramas on
Caesar and Makomet, at another with an epic on Der ewige Jude, and again with a tragedy on Prometheus, of which a magnificent fragment has passed into his works. Greatest of all the torsos of this period, however, was the dramatization of
Faust. Thanks to a manuscript copy of the play in its earliest form - discovered as recently as 1887 - we are now able to distinguish how much of this tragedy was the immediate product of the
Sturm und Drang, and to understand the intentions with which the young poet began his masterpiece. Goethe's hero changed with the author's riper experience and with his new conceptions of man's place and duties in the world, but the Gretchen tragedy was taken over into the finished poem, practically unaltered, from the earliest
Faust of the
Sturm und Drang. With these wonderful scenes, the most intensely tragic in all German literature, Goethe's poetry in this period reaches its climax. Still another important work, however, was conceived, and in large measure written at this time, the drama of
Egmont, which was not published until 1788. This work may, to some extent, be regarded as supplementary to
Faust; it presents the lighter, more cheerful and optimistic side of Goethe's philosophy in these years; Graf Egmont, the most winning and fascinating of the poet's heroes, is endowed with that "demonic" power over the sympathies of men and women, which Goethe himself possessed in so high a degree. But Egmont depends for its interest almost solely on two characters, Egmont himself and Klärchen, Gretchen's counterpart; regarded as a drama, it demonstrates the futility of that defiance of convention and rules with which the
Sturm und Drang set out. It remained for Goethe, in the next period of his life, to construct on classic models a new vehicle for German dramatic poetry.
In December 1774 the young hereditary prince of Weimar, Charles Augustus, passing through Frankfort on his way to Paris, came into personal touch with Goethe, and invited the poet to visit Weimar when, in the following year, he took up the reins of government. In October 1775 the invitation was repeated, and on the 7th of November of that year Goethe arrived in the little Saxon capital which was to remain his home for the rest of his life. During the first few months in Weimar the poet gave himself up to the pleasures of the moment as unreservedly as his patron; indeed, the Weimar court even looked upon him for a time as a tempter who led the young duke astray. But the latter, although himself a mere stripling, had implicit faith in Goethe, and a firm conviction that his genius could be utilized in other fields besides literature. Goethe was not long in Weimar before he was entrusted with responsible state duties, and events soon justified the duke's confidence. Goethe proved the soul of the Weimar government, and a minister of state of energy and foresight. He interested himself in agriculture, horticulture and mining, which were of paramount importance to the welfare of the duchy, and out of these interests sprang his own love for the natural sciences, which took up so much of his time in later years. The inevitable love-interest was also not wanting. As Friederike had fitted into the background of Goethe's Strassburg life, Lotte into that of Wetzlar, so now Charlotte von Stein, the wife of a Weimar official, was the personification of the more aristocratic ideals of Weimar society. We possess only the poet's share of his correspondence with Frau von Stein, but it is possible to infer from it that, of all Goethe's loves, this was intellectually the most worthy of him. Frau von Stein was a woman of refined literary taste and culture, seven years older than he and the mother of seven children. There was something more spiritual, something that partook rather of the passionate friendships of the 18th century than of love in Goethe's relations with her. Frau von Stein dominated the poet's life for twelve years, until his journey to Italy in 1786-1788. Of other events of this period the most notable were two winter journeys, the first in 1777, to the Harz Mountains, the second, two years later, to Switzerland - journeys which gave Goethe scope for that introspection and reflection for which his Weimar life left him little time. On the second of these journeys he revisited Friederike in Sesenheim, saw Lili, who had married and settled in Strassburg, and made the personal acquaintance of Lavater in Zurich.
The literary results of these years cannot be compared with those of the preceding period; they are virtually limited to a few wonderful lyrics, such as
Wanderers Nachtlied, An den Mond, Gesang der Geister uber den Wassern, or ballads, such as
Der Erlkonig, a charming little drama,
Die Geschwisler (1776), in which the poet's relations to both Lili and Frau von Stein seem to be reflected, a dramatic satire,
Der Triumph der Empffndsamkeit (1778), and a number of Singspiele,
Lila (1777),
Die Fischerin,
List und Rache, and
Jery und Bately (1780). But greater works were in preparation. A religious epic and a tragedy did not advance much further than plans; but in 1777, under the influence of the theatrical experiments at the Weimar court, Goethe conceived and in great measure wrote a novel of the theatre, which was to have borne the title
Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung; and in 1779 himself took part in a representation before the court at Ettersburg, of his drama
Iphigenie auf Tauris.
In September, 1786 Goethe set out from Karlsbad - secretly and stealthily, his plan known only to his servant - on that memorable journey to Italy, to which he had looked forward with such intense longing; he could not cross the Alps quickly enough, so impatient was he to set foot in Italy. He travelled by way of Munich, the Brenner and Lago di Garda to Verona and Venice, and from thence to Rome, where he arrived on the 29th of October 1786. Here he gave himself up unreservedly to the new impressions which crowded on him, and he was soon at home among the German artists in Rome, who welcomed him warmly. In the spring of 1787 he extended his journey as far as Naples and Sicily, returning to Rome in June 1787, where he remained until his final departure for Germany on the 2nd of April 1788. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of Goethe's Italian journey. He himself regarded it as a kind of climax to his life; never before had he attained such complete understanding of his genius and mission in the world; it afforded him a vantage-ground from which he could renew the past and make plans for the future. In Weimar he had felt that he was no longer in sympathy with the
Sturm und Drang, but it was Italy which first taught him clearly what might take the place of that movement in German poetry. To the modern reader, who may well be impressed by Goethe's extraordinary receptivity, it may seem strange that his interests in Italy were so limited; for, after all, he saw comparatively little of the art treasures of Italy. He went to Rome in Winckelmann's footsteps; it was the antique he sought, and his interest in the artists of the Renaissance was virtually restricted to their imitation of classic models.
This search for the classic ideal is reflected in the works he completed or wrote under the Italian sky. The calm beauty of Greek tragedy is seen in the new iambic version of
Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787); the classicism of the Renaissance gives the ground-tone to the wonderful drama of
Torquato Tasso (1790), in which the conflict of poetic genius with the prosaic world is transmuted into imperishable poetry. Classic, too, in this sense, were the plans of a drama on
Iphigenie auf Delphos and of an epic,
Nausikaa. Most interesting of all, however, is the reflection of the classic spirit in works already begun in earlier days, such as
Egmont and
Faust. The former drama was finished in Italy and appeared in 1788, the latter was brought a step further forward, part of it being published as a Fragment in 1790.
Disappointment in more senses than one awaited Goethe on his return to Weimar. He came back from Italy with a new philosophy of life, a philosophy at once classic and pagan, and with very definite ideas of what constituted literary excellence. But Germany had not advanced; in 1788 his countrymen were still under the influence of that
Sturm und Drang from which the poet had fled. The times seemed to him more out of joint than ever, and he withdrew into himself. Even his relations to the old friends were changed. Frau von Stein had not known of his flight to Italy until she received a letter from Rome; but he looked forward to her welcome on his return. The months of absence, however, the change he had undergone, weakened the Weimar memories; if he left Weimar as Frau von Stein's lover he returned only as her friend; and she naturally resented the change. Goethe, meanwhile, satisfied to continue the freer customs to which he had adapted himself in Rome, found a new mistress in Christiane Vulpius (1765-1816), the least interesting of all the women who attracted him. But Christiane gradually filled up a gap in the poet's life; she gave him, quietly, unobtrusively, without making demands on him, the comforts of a home. She was not accepted by court society; it did not matter to her that even Goethe's intimate friends ignored her; and she, who had suited the poet's whim when he desired to shut himself off from all that might dim the recollection of Italy, became with the years an indispensable helpmate to him. On the birth in 1789 of his son, Goethe had some thought of legalizing his relations with Christiane, but this intention was not realized until 1806, when the invasion of Weimar by the French made him fear for both life and property.
The period of Goethe's life which succeeded his return from Italy was restless and unsettled; relieved of his state duties, he returned in 1790 to Venice, only to be disenchanted with the Italy he had loved so intensely a year or two before. A journey with the duke of Weimar to Breslau followed, and in 1792 he accompanied his master on that campaign against France which ended so ingloriously for the German arms at Valmy. In later years Goethe published his account both of this Campagne in Frankreich and of the Bela gerung von Mainz, at which he was also present in 1793. His literary work naturally suffered under these distractions. Tasso, and the edition of the Schriffen in which it was to appear, had still to be completed on his return from Italy; the
Romische Elegien, perhaps the most Latin of all his works, were published in 1795, and the
Venetianiscize Epigramme, the result of the second visit to Italy, in 1796. The French Revolution, in which all Europe was engrossed, was in Goethe's eyes only another proof that the passing of the old régime meant the abrogation of all law and order, and he gave voice to his antagonism to the new democratic principles in the dramas
Der Grosskophta (1792),
Der Burgergeneral (1793), and in the unfinished fragments
Die Aufgeregten and
Das Mddchen von Oberkirch. The spirited translation of the epic of
Reinecke Fuchs (1794) he took up as a relief and an antidote to the social disruption of the time. Two new interests, however, strengthened the ties between Goethe and Weimar, - ties which the Italian journey had threatened to sever: his appointment in 1791 as director of the ducal theatre, a post which he occupied for twenty-two years, and his absorption in scientific studies. In 1790 he published his important
Versuch, die Metamorphose der Pftanzen zu erklaren, which was an even more fundamental achievement for the new science of comparative morphology, than his discovery some six years earlier of the existence of a formation in the human jaw-bone analogous to the intermaxillary bone in apes; and in 1791 and 1792 appeared two parts of his
Beitrage zur Optik.
Meanwhile, however, Goethe had again taken up the novel of the theatre which he had begun years before, with a view to finishing it and including it in the edition of his
Neue Schriften (1792-1800). The novel of purely theatrical interests was widened out to embrace the history of a young man's apprenticeship to life. The change of plan explains, although it may not exculpate, the formlessness and loose construction of the work, its extremes of realistic detail and poetic allegory. A hero, who was probabIy originally intended to demonstrate the failure of the vacillating temperament when brought face to face with the problems of art, proved ill-adapted to demonstrate those precepts for the guidance of life with which the Lehrjahre closes; unstable of purpose,
Wilhelm Meister is not so much an illustration of the author's life-philosophy as a lay-figure on which he demonstrates his views.
Wilhelm Meister is a work of extraordinary variety, ranging from the commonplace realism of the troupe of strolling players to the poetic Romanticism of Mignon and the harper.
In completing
Wilhelm Meister, Goethe found a sympathetic and encouraging critic in Schiller, to whom he owed in great measure his renewed interest in poetry. After years of tentative approaches on Schiller's part, years in which that poet concealed even from himself his desire for a friendly understanding with Goethe, the favourable moment arrived; it was in June 1794, when Schiller was seeking collaborators for his new periodical
Die Horen; and his invitation addressed to Goethe was the beginning of a friendship which continued unbroken until the younger poet's death. The friendship of Goethe and Schiller, of which their correspondence is a priceless record, had its limitations; it was purely intellectual in character, a certain barrier of personal reserve being maintained to the last. But for the literary life of both poets the gain was incommensurable. As far as actual work was concerned, Goethe went his own way as he had always been accustomed to do; but the mere fact that he devoted himself with increasing interest to literature was due to Schiller's stimulus. It was Schiller, too, who induced him to undertake those studies on the nature of epic and dramatic poetry which resulted in the epic of
Hermann und Dorothea; without the friendship there would have been no
Xenien and no ballads, and it was his younger friend's encouragement which induced Goethe to betake himself once more to the "misty path" of
Faust, and bring the first part of that drama to a conclusion.
Goethe's classicism brought him into inevitable antagonism with the new Romantic movement which had been inaugurated in 1798 by the
Athenaeum, edited by the brothers Schlegel. The sharpness of the conflict was, however, blunted by the fact that, without exception, the young Romantic writers looked up to Goethe as its master; they modelled their fiction on
Wilhelm Meister; they regarded his lyrics as the high-water mark of German poetry; Goethe, Novalis declared, was the "Statthalfer of poetry on earth." With regard to painting and sculpture, however, Goethe felt that a protest was necessary, if the insidious ideas propounded in works like
Wackenroder's Herzensergiessungen were not to do irreparable harm, by bringing back the confusion of the
Sturm und Drang; and, as a rejoinder to the Romantic theories, Goethe, in conjunction with his friend Heinrich Meyer (1760-1832), published from 1798 to 1800 an art review,
Die Pro pylaen. Again, in
Winckelmann und seine Zeit (1805) Goethe vigorously defended the classical ideals of which Winckelmann had been the founder. But in the end he proved himself the greatest enemy to the strict classic doctrine by the publication in 1808 of the completed first part of
Faust, a work which was accepted by contemporaries as a triumph of Romantic art.
The third and final period of Goethe's long life may be said to have begun after Schiller's death. His life moved on comparatively uneventfully. Even the
Napoleonic regime of 1806-1813 disturbed but little his equanimity. Goethe, the cosmopolitan Weltburger of the 18th century, had himself no very intense feelings of patriotism, and, having seen Germany flourish as a group of small states under enlightened despotisms, he had little confidence in the dreamers of 1813 who hoped to see the glories of Barbarossa's empire revived.
Napoleon, moreover, he regarded not as the scourge of Europe, but as the defender of civilization against the barbarism of the Slays; and in the famous interview between the two men at Erfurt the poet's admiration was reciprocated by the French conqueror. Thus Goethe had no great sympathy for the war of liberation which kindled young hearts from one end of Germany to the other; and when the national enthusiasm rose to its highest pitch, he buried himself in those optical and morphological studies, which, with increasing years, occupied more and more of his time and interest.
The works and events of the last twenty-five years of Goethe's life may be briefly summarized. In 1805, as we have seen, he suffered an irreparable loss in the death of Schiller; in 1806, Christiane became his legal wife, and to the same year belongs the magnificent tribute to his dead friend, the
Epilog zu Schillers Glocke. Two new friendships about this time kindled in the poet something of the juvenile fire and passion of younger days. Bettina von Arnim came into personal touch with Goethe in 1807, and her
Briefwechsel Goethes mit dnem Kinde (published in 1835) is, in its mingling of truth and fiction, one of the most delightful products of the Romantic mind; but the episode was of less importance for Goethe's life than Bettina would have us believe. On the other hand, his interest in Minna Herzlieb, foster-daughter of the publisher Frommann in Jena, was of a warmer nature,and has left its traces on his sonnets. In 1808, as we have seen, appeared the first part of
Faust, and in 1809 it was followed by
Die Wahlverwandtschaften. The novel, hardly less than the drama, effected a change in the public attitude towards the poet. Since the beginning of the century the conviction had been gaining ground that Goethe's mission was accomplished, that the day of his leadership was over; but here were two works which not merely re-established his ascendancy, but proved that the old poet was in sympathy with the movement of letters, and keenly alive to the change of ideas which the new century had brought in its train. The intimate psychological study of four minds, which forms the subject of
Die Wahlverwandtschaften, was an essay in a new type of fiction, and pointed out the way for developments of the German novel after the stimulus of
Wilhelm Meister had exhausted itself. Less important than
Die Wahlver-wandtschaften was
Pandora (1810), the final product of Goethe's classicism, and the most uncompromisingly classical and allegorical of all his works. And in 1810, too, appeared his treatise on
Farbenlehre. In the following year the first volume of his autobiography was published under the title
Aus ineinem Leben, Dichiung und Wahrheit. The second and third volumes of this work followed in 1812 and 1814; the fourth, bringing the story of his life up to the close of the Frankfort period in 1833, after his death. Goethe felt, even late in life, too intimately bound up with Weimar to discuss in detail his early life there, and he shrank from carrying his biography beyond the year 1775. But a number of other publications - descriptions of travel, such as the
Italienische Reise (1816-1817), the materials for a continuation of
Dichtung und Wahrheit have also to be numbered among the writings which Goethe has left us as documents of his life. Meanwhile no less valuable biographical materials were accumulating in his diaries, his voluminous. English writers,
Byron, Scott and Carlyle, Italians like Manzoni, French scientists and poets, could all depend on friendly words of appreciation and encouragement from Weimar. In
West-ostlicher Diwan (1819), a collection of lyrics - matchless in form and even more concentrated in expression than those of earlier days - which were suggested by a German translation of
Hafiz, Goethe had another surprise in store for his contemporaries. And, again, it was an actual passion - that for Marianne von Willemer, whom he met in 1814 and 1815 - which rekindled in him the lyric fire. Meanwhile the years were thinning the ranks of Weimar society: Wieland, the last of Goethe's greater literary contemporaries, died in 1813, his wife in 1816, Charlotte von Stein in 1827 and Duke Charles Augustus in 1828. Goethe's retirement from the direction of the theatre in 1817 meant for him a break with the literary life of the day. In 1822 a passion for a young girl, Ulrike von Levetzow, whom he met at Marienbad, inspired the fine
Trilogie der Leidenschaft, and between 1821 and 1829 appeared the long-expected and long-promised continuation of
Wilhelm Meister,
Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. The latter work, however, was a disappointment: perhaps it could not have been otherwise. Goethe had lost the thread of his romance and it was difficult for him to resume it. Problems of the relation of the individual to society and industrial questions were to have formed the theme of the
Wanderjahre; but since the French Revolution these problems had themselves entered on a new phase and demanded a method of treatment which it was not easy for the old poet to learn. Thus his intentions were only partially carried out, and the volumes were filled out by irrelevant stories, which had been written at widely different periods.
But the crowning achievement of Goethe's literary life was the completion of
Faust. The poem had accompanied him from early manhood to the end and was the repository for the fullest "confession" of his life; it is the poetic epitome of his experience. The second part is, in form, far removed from the impressive realism of the Urfaust. It is a phantasmagory; a drama the actors in which are not creatures of flesh and blood, but the shadows of an unreal world of allegory. The lover of Gretchen had, as far as poetic continuity is concerned, disappeared with the close of the first part. In the second part it is virtually a new Faust who, at the hands of a new Mephistopheles, goes out into a world that is not ours. Yet behind these unconvincing shadows of an imperial court with its financial difficulties, of the classical
Walpurgisnacht, of the fantastic creation of the Homunculus, the noble Helena episode and the impressive mystery-scene of the close, where the centenarian Faust finally triumphs over the powers of evil, there lies a philosophy of life, a ripe wisdom born of experience, such as no European poet had given to the world since the Renaissance.
Faust has been well called the "divine comedy" of 18th-century humanism.
The second part of
Faust forms a worthy close to the life of Germany's greatest man of letters, who died in Weimar on the 22nd of March 1832. He was the last of those universal minds which have been able to compass all domains of human activity and knowledge; for he stood on the brink of an era of rapidly expanding knowledge which has made for ever impossible the universality of interest and sympathy which distinguished him. As a poet, his fame has undergone many vicissitudes since his death, ranging from the indifference of the "Young German" school to the enthusiastic admiration of the closing decades of the 19th century - an enthusiasm to which we owe the Weimar Goethe-Gesellschaft (founded in 1885) and a vast literature dealing with the poet's life and work; but the fact of his being Germany's greatest poet and the master of her classical literature has never been seriously put in question. The intrinsic value of his poetic work, regarded apart from his personality, is smaller in proportion to its bulk than is the case with many lesser German poets and with the greatest poets of other literatures. But Goethe was a type of literary man hitherto unrepresented among the leading writers of the world's literature; he was a poet whose supreme greatness lay in his subjectivity. Only a small fraction of Goethe's work was written in an impersonal and objective spirit, and sprang from what might be called a conscious artistic impulse; by far the larger - and the better - part is the immediate reflex of his feelings and experiences.
It is as a lyric poet that Goethe's supremacy is least likely to be challenged; he has given his nation, whose highest literary expression has in all ages been essentially lyric, its greatest songs. No other German poet has succeeded in attuning feeling, sentiment and thought so perfectly to the music of words as he; none has expressed so fully that spirituality in which the quintessence of German lyrism lies. Goethe's dramas, on the other hand, have not, in the eyes of his nation, succeeded in holding their own beside Schiller's; but the reason is rather because Goethe, from what might be called a wilful obstinacy, refused to be bound by the conventions of the theatre, than because he was deficient in the cunning of the dramatist. For, as an interpreter of human character in the drama, Goethe is without a rival among modern poets, and there is not one of his plays that does not contain a few scenes or characters which bear indisputable testimony to his mastery. Faust is Germany's most national drama, and it remains perhaps for the theatre of the future to prove itself capable of popularizing psychological masterpieces. It is as a novelist that Goethe has suffered most by the lapse of time. The
Sorrows of Wertlier no longer moves us to tears, and even
Wilhelm Meister and
Die Wahlverwandtschaften require more understanding for the conditions under which they were written than do
Faust or
Egmont. Goethe could fill his prose with rich wisdom, but he was only the perfect artist in verse.
Little attention is nowadays paid to Goethe's work in other fields, work which he himself in some cases prized more highly than his poetry. It is only as an illustration of his many-sidedness and his manifold activity that we now turn to his work as a statesman, as a theatre-director, as a practical political economist. His art-criticism is symptomatic of a phase of European taste which tried in vain to check the growing individualism of Romanticism. His scientific studies and discoveries awaken only an historical interest. We marvel at the obstinacy with which he, with inadequate mathematical knowledge, opposed the
Newtonian theory of light and colour; and at his championship of "Neptunism," the theory of aqueous origin, as opposed to "Vulcanism," that of igneous origin of the earth's crust. Of far-reaching importance was, on the other hand, his foreshadowing of the
Darwinian theory in his works on the metamorphosis of plants and on animal morphology. Indeed, the deduction to be drawn from Goethe's contributions to botany and anatomy is that he, as no other of his contemporaries, possessed that type of scientific mind which, in the 19th century, has made for progress; he was
Darwin's predecessor by virtue of his enunciation of what has now become one of the commonplaces of natural science - organic evolution. Modern, too, was the outlook of the aging poet on the changing social conditions of the age, wonderfully sympathetic his attitude towards modern industry, which steam was just beginning to establish on a new basis, and towards modern democracy. The Europe of his later years was very - different from the idyllic and enlightened autocracy of the 18th century, in which he had spent his best years and to which he had devoted his energies; yet Goethe was at home in it.
From the philosophic movement, in which Schiller and the Romanticists were so deeply involved, Goethe stood apart. Comparatively early in life he had found in
Spinoza the philosopher who responded to his needs;
Spinoza taught him to see in nature the "living garment of God," and more he did not seek or need to know. As a convinced realist he took his standpoint on nature and experience, and could afford to look on objectively.
Kant he by no means ignored, and under Schiller's guidance he learned much from him; but of the younger thinkers, only Schelling, whose mystic nature-philosophy was a development of
Spinoza's ideas, touched a sympathetic chord in his nature. As a moralist and a guide to the conduct of life - an aspect of Goethe's work which Carlyle, viewing him through the coloured glasses of Fichtean idealism, emphasized and interpreted not always justly - Goethe was a powerful force on German life in years of political and intellectual depression. It is difficult even still to get beyond the maxims of practical wisdom be scattered so liberally through his writings, the lessons to be learned from
Meister and
Faust, or even that calm, optimistic fatalism which never deserted Goethe, and was so completely justified by the tenor of his life. If the philosophy of
Spinoza provided the poet with a religion which made individual creeds and dogmas unnecessary and impossible, so Leibnitz's doctrine of predestinism supplied the foundations for his faith in the divine mission of human life.
This many-sided activity is a tribute to the greatness of Goethe's mind and personality; we may regard him merely as the embodiment of his particular age, or as a poet "for all time." Goethe is the most universal type of genius, It is the full, rich humanity of his life and personality - not the art behind which the artist disappears, or the definite pronouncements of the thinker or the teacher - that constitutes his claim to a place in the front rank of men of letters. His life was his greatest work. [Adapted from
Encyclopedia Britannica (1911)]
Books from Alibris: Goethe 
