Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (, German: [ˈjoːhan
ˈvɔlfɡaŋ fɔn ˈɡøːtə] (listen); 28
August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German
writer and statesman. His works include four
novels; epic and lyric poetry; prose and verse
dramas; memoirs; an autobiography; literary
and aesthetic criticism; and treatises on
botany, anatomy, and colour. In addition,
there are numerous literary and scientific
fragments, more than 10,000 letters, and nearly
3,000 drawings by him extant.
A literary celebrity by the age of 25, Goethe
was ennobled by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Karl
August, in 1782 after taking up residence
there in November 1775 following the success
of his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther
(1774). He was an early participant in the
Sturm und Drang literary movement. During
his first ten years in Weimar, Goethe was
a member of the Duke's privy council, sat
on the war and highway commissions, oversaw
the reopening of silver mines in nearby Ilmenau,
and implemented a series of administrative
reforms at the University of Jena. He also
contributed to the planning of Weimar's botanical
park and the rebuilding of its Ducal Palace.
In 1998 both these sites together with nine
others were designated a UNESCO World Heritage
site under the name Classical Weimar.Goethe's
first major scientific work, the Metamorphosis
of Plants, was published after he returned
from a 1788 tour of Italy. In 1791, he was
made managing director of the theatre at Weimar,
and in 1794 he began a friendship with the
dramatist, historian, and philosopher Friedrich
Schiller, whose plays he premiered until Schiller's
death in 1805. During this period, Goethe
published his second novel, Wilhelm Meister's
Apprenticeship; the verse epic Hermann and
Dorothea, and, in 1808, the first part of
his most celebrated drama, Faust. His conversations
and various common undertakings throughout
the 1790s with Schiller, Johann Gottlieb Fichte,
Johann Gottfried Herder, Alexander von Humboldt,
Wilhelm von Humboldt, and August and Friedrich
Schlegel have come to be collectively termed
Weimar Classicism.
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer
named Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship one
of the four greatest novels ever written (along
with Tristram Shandy, La Nouvelle Héloïse,
and Don Quixote), while the American philosopher
and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson selected
Goethe as one of six "representative men"
in his work of the same name (along with Plato,
Emanuel Swedenborg, Montaigne, Napoleon, and
Shakespeare). Goethe's comments and observations
form the basis of several biographical works,
notably Johann Peter Eckermann's Conversations
with Goethe.
== Life ==
=== 
Early life ===
Goethe's father, Johann Caspar Goethe, lived
with his family in a large house in Frankfurt,
then an Imperial Free City of the Holy Roman
Empire. Though he had studied law in Leipzig
and had been appointed Imperial Councillor,
he was not involved in the city's official
affairs. Johann Caspar married Goethe's mother,
Catharina Elizabeth Textor at 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, who was born in 1750,
died at early ages.
His father and private tutors gave Goethe
lessons in all the common subjects of their
time, especially languages (Latin, Greek,
French, Italian, English and Hebrew). Goethe
also received lessons in dancing, riding and
fencing. Johann Caspar, feeling frustrated
in his own ambitions, was determined that
his children should have all those advantages
that he had not.Although Goethe's great passion
was drawing, he quickly became interested
in literature; Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
and Homer were among his early favorites.
He had a lively devotion to theater as well
and was greatly fascinated by puppet shows
that were annually arranged in his home; this
is a recurrent theme in his literary work
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.
He also took great pleasure in reading works
on history and religion. He writes about this
period:
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 busy 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, 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.
Goethe became also acquainted with Frankfurt
actors. Among early literary attempts, he
was infatuated with Gretchen, who would later
reappear in his Faust and the adventures with
whom he would concisely describe in Dichtung
und Wahrheit. He adored Caritas Meixner (1750–1773),
a wealthy Worms trader's daughter and friend
of his sister, who would later marry the merchant
G. F. Schuler.
=== Legal career ===
Goethe studied law at Leipzig University from
1765 to 1768. He detested learning age-old
judicial rules by heart, preferring instead
to attend the poetry lessons of Christian
Fürchtegott Gellert. In Leipzig, Goethe fell
in love with Anna Katharina Schönkopf and
wrote cheerful verses about her in the Rococo
genre. In 1770, he anonymously released Annette,
his first collection of poems. His uncritical
admiration for many contemporary poets vanished
as he became interested in Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing and Christoph Martin Wieland. Already
at this time, Goethe wrote a good deal, but
he threw away nearly all of these works, except
for the comedy Die Mitschuldigen. The restaurant
Auerbachs Keller and its legend of Faust's
1525 barrel ride impressed him so much that
Auerbachs Keller became the only real place
in his closet drama Faust Part One. As his
studies did not progress, Goethe was forced
to return to Frankfurt at the close of August
1768.
Goethe became severely ill in Frankfurt. During
the year and a half that followed, because
of several relapses, the relationship with
his father worsened. During convalescence,
Goethe was nursed by his mother and sister.
In April 1770, Goethe left Frankfurt in order
to finish his studies at the University of
Strasbourg.
In Alsace, Goethe blossomed. No other landscape
has he described as affectionately as the
warm, wide Rhine area. In Strasbourg, Goethe
met Johann Gottfried Herder. The two became
close friends, and crucially to Goethe's intellectual
development, Herder kindled his interest in
Shakespeare, Ossian and in the notion of Volkspoesie
(folk poetry). On 14 October 1772 Goethe held
a gathering in his parental home in honour
of the first German "Shakespeare Day". His
first acquaintance with Shakespeare's works
is described as his personal awakening in
literature.On a trip to the village Sessenheim,
Goethe fell in love with Friederike Brion,
in October 1770, but, after ten months, terminated
the relationship in August 1771. Several of
his poems, like "Willkommen und Abschied",
"Sesenheimer Lieder" and "Heidenröslein",
originate from this time.
At the end of August 1771, Goethe acquired
the academic degree of the Lizenziat (Licentia
docendi) in Frankfurt and established a small
legal practice. Although in his academic work
he had expressed the ambition to make jurisprudence
progressively more humane, his inexperience
led him to proceed too vigorously in his first
cases, and he was reprimanded and lost further
ones. This prematurely terminated his career
as a lawyer after only a few months. At this
time, Goethe was acquainted with the court
of Darmstadt, where his inventiveness was
praised. From this milieu came Johann Georg
Schlosser (who was later to become his brother-in-law)
and Johann Heinrich Merck. Goethe also pursued
literary plans again; this time, his father
did not have anything against it, 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. Entitled
Götz von Berlichingen, the work went directly
to the heart of Goethe's contemporaries.
Goethe could not subsist on being one of the
editors of a literary periodical (published
by Schlosser and Merck). In May 1772 he once
more began the practice of law at Wetzlar.
In 1774 he wrote the book which would bring
him worldwide fame, The Sorrows of Young Werther.
The outer shape of the work's plot is widely
taken over from what Goethe experienced during
his Wetzlar time with Charlotte Buff (1753–1828)
and her fiancé, Johann Christian Kestner
(1741–1800), as well as from the suicide
of the author's friend Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem
(1747–1772); in it, Goethe made a desperate
passion of what was in reality a hearty and
relaxed friendship. Despite the immense success
of Werther, it did not bring Goethe much financial
gain because copyright laws at the time were
essentially nonexistent. (In later years Goethe
would bypass this problem by periodically
authorizing "new, revised" editions of his
Complete Works.)
=== 
Early years in Weimar ===
In 1775, Goethe was invited, on the strength
of his fame as the author of The Sorrows of
Young Werther, to the court of Karl August,
Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, who would become
Grand Duke in 1815. (The Duke at the time
was 18 years of age, to Goethe's 26.) Goethe
thus went to live 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, becoming the Duke's friend and
chief adviser.In 1776, Goethe formed a close
relationship to Charlotte von Stein, an older,
married woman. The intimate bond with von
Stein 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.Goethe, aside from official duties,
was also a friend and confidant to the Duke,
and participated fully 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 experience which
perhaps could be 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 chancellor of the Duchy's Exchequer
left his office, Goethe agreed to act in his
place 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 (this being indicated
by the "von" in his name).
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 W. 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 during his own youth, 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 (see Affair of the Diamond
Necklace).
He also journeyed to Sicily during this time,
and wrote intriguingly 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 Carl 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 their son Julius
August Walter 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 defense 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 (1796–1872), cared for the
elder Goethe until his death in 1832. August
and Ottilie had three children: Walther, Freiherr
von Goethe (1818–1885), Wolfgang, Freiherr
von Goethe (1820–1883) and Alma 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. By 1820, Goethe was
on amiable terms with Kaspar Maria von Sternberg.
In 1823, having recovered from a near fatal
heart illness, Goethe fell in love with Ulrike
von Levetzow whom he wanted to marry, but
because of the opposition of her mother he
never proposed. Their last meeting in Carlsbad
on 5 September 1823 inspired him to the famous
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 Agata Szymanowska.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 with 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).
=== Death ===
In 1832, Goethe died in Weimar of apparent
heart failure. His last words, according to
his doctor Carl Vogel, were, Mehr Licht! (More
light!), but this is disputed as Vogel was
not in the room at the moment Goethe died.
He is buried in the Ducal Vault at Weimar's
Historical Cemetery.
Eckermann closes his famous work, Conversations
with Goethe, with this passage:
The morning after Goethe's death, a deep desire
seized me to look once again upon his earthly
garment. His faithful servant, Frederick,
opened for me the chamber in which he was
laid out. Stretched upon his back, he reposed
as if asleep; profound peace and security
reigned in the features of his sublimely noble
countenance. The mighty brow seemed yet to
harbour thoughts. I wished for a lock of his
hair; but reverence prevented me from cutting
it off. The body lay naked, only wrapped in
a white sheet; large pieces of ice had been
placed near it, to keep it fresh as long as
possible. Frederick drew aside the sheet,
and I was astonished at the divine magnificence
of the limbs. The breast was powerful, broad,
and arched; the arms and thighs were elegant,
and of the most perfect shape; nowhere, on
the whole body, was there a trace of either
fat or of leanness and decay. A perfect man
lay in great beauty before me; and the rapture
the sight caused me made me forget for a moment
that the immortal spirit had left such an
abode. I laid my hand on his heart – there
was a deep silence – and I turned away to
give free vent to my suppressed tears.
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.
== Literary work ==
=== Overview ===
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 he began Wilhelm Meister's
Apprenticeship, wrote the dramas Iphigenie
auf Tauris (Iphigenia in Tauris), Egmont,
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, Elective Affinities,
the West-Eastern Diwan (a 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) which covers his early life
and ends with his departure for Weimar, his
Italian Journey, and a series of treatises
on art. 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 own near-suicidal obsession
with a young woman during this period, an
obsession he quelled through the writing process.
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 on the face of it, it appeared
to condone and glorify suicide. Suicide is
considered sinful by Christian doctrine: suicides
were denied Christian burial with the bodies
often mistreated and dishonoured in various
ways; in corollary, the deceased's property
and possessions were often confiscated by
the Church. However, Goethe explained his
use of Werther in his autobiography. He said
he "turned reality into poetry but his friends
thought poetry should be turned into reality
and the poem imitated." He was against this
reading of poetry. 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 1773–74, 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.
Goethe's poetic work served as a model for
an entire movement in German poetry termed
Innerlichkeit ("introversion") and represented
by, for example, Heine. Goethe's words inspired
a number of compositions by, among others,
Mozart, Beethoven (who idolised Goethe), Schubert,
Berlioz and Wolf. Perhaps the single most
influential piece is "Mignon's Song" which
opens with one of the most famous lines in
German poetry, an allusion to Italy: "Kennst
du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn?" ("Do
you know the land where the lemon trees bloom?").
He is also widely quoted. Epigrams such as
"Against criticism a man can neither protest
nor defend himself; he must act in spite of
it, and then it will gradually yield to him",
"Divide and rule, a sound motto; unite and
lead, a better one", and "Enjoy when you can,
and endure when you must", are still in usage
or are often paraphrased. Lines from Faust,
such as "Das also war des Pudels Kern", "Das
ist der Weisheit letzter Schluss", or "Grau
ist alle Theorie" have entered everyday German
usage.
Some well-known quotations are often incorrectly
attributed to Goethe. These include Hippocrates'
"Art is long, life is short", which is echoed
in Goethe's Faust and Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.
=== Creativity and crisis ===
Goethe overcame emotional turmoil, relational
conflicts and mood swings through self-reflection,
political and scientific work, and writing.
His striving to come to terms with adverse
life events began with the death of his brother
Hermann Jakob when Johann Wolfgang was ten
years old and continued as he met emotional
crises in his adolescence: "And thus began
that habit from which I could not break away
my whole life through – the habit of turning
into an image, into a poem, whatever delighted
or troubled, or otherwise occupied me, and
thus of coming to some definite conclusion
with regard to it, so that I might both rectify
my conceptions of external things and satisfy
my inner cravings. To no one was the faculty
for so doing more necessary than to me, for
by nature I was constantly carried from one
extreme to the other".
== 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
greatest amount of interest, Goethe was also
keenly involved in studies of natural science.
He wrote several works on morphology, and
colour theory. Goethe also had the largest
private collection of minerals in all of Europe.
By the time of his death, in order to gain
a comprehensive view in 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 Goethe Elephant,
still exists and 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.
Goethe's botanical theories were partly based
on his gardening in Weimar.Goethe also popularized
the Goethe barometer using a principle established
by Torricelli. According to Hegel, "Goethe
has occupied himself a good deal with meteorology;
barometer readings interested him particularly...
What he says is important: the main thing
is that he gives a comparative table of barometric
readings during the whole month of December
1822, at Weimar, Jena, London, Boston, Vienna,
Töpel... He claims to deduce from it that
the barometric level varies in the same proportion
not only in each zone but that it has the
same variation, too, at different altitudes
above sea-level".
In 1810, Goethe published his Theory of Colours,
which he considered his most important work.
In it, he contentiously characterized colour
as arising from the dynamic interplay of light
and darkness through the mediation of a turbid
medium. In 1816, Schopenhauer went on to develop
his own theory in On Vision and Colours based
on the observations supplied in Goethe's book.
After being translated into English by Charles
Eastlake in 1840, his theory became widely
adopted by the art world, most notably J.
M. W. Turner. Goethe's work also inspired
the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, to write
his Remarks on Colour. Goethe was vehemently
opposed to Newton's analytic treatment of
colour, engaging instead in compiling a comprehensive
rational description of a wide variety of
colour phenomena. Although the accuracy of
Goethe's observations does not admit a great
deal of criticism, his aesthetic approach
did not lend itself to the demands of analytic
and mathematical analysis used ubiquitously
in modern Science. Goethe was, however, the
first to systematically study the physiological
effects of colour, and his observations on
the effect of opposed colours led him to a
symmetric arrangement of his colour wheel,
'for the colours diametrically opposed to
each other... are those which reciprocally
evoke each other in the eye. (Goethe, Theory
of Colours, 1810). In this, he anticipated
Ewald Hering's opponent colour theory (1872).Goethe
outlines his method in the essay The experiment
as mediator between subject and object (1772).
In the Kurschner edition of Goethe's works,
the science editor, Rudolf Steiner, presents
Goethe's approach to science as phenomenological.
Steiner elaborated on that in the books The
Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception
and Goethe's World View, in which he characterizes
intuition as the instrument by which one grasps
Goethe's biological archetype—The Typus.
Novalis, himself a geologist and mining engineer,
expressed the opinion that Goethe was the
first physicist of his time and 'epoch-making
in the history of physics', writing that Goethe's
studies of light, of the metamorphosis of
plants and of insects were indications and
proofs 'that the perfect educational lecture
belongs in the artist's sphere of work'; and
that Goethe would be surpassed 'but only in
the way in which the ancients can be surpassed,
in inner content and force, in variety and
depth—as an artist actually not, or only
very little, for his rightness and intensity
are perhaps already more exemplary than it
would seem'.
== 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.Though in his novel Wilhelm Meister's
Apprenticeship, Goethe described the beauty
of the male body, he was attracted to women,
starting with his first love "Gretchen" when
he was 14 and ending with Ulrike von Levetzow
when he was 73.In a conversation on April
7, 1830 Goethe stated that pederasty is an
"aberration" that easily leads to "animal,
roughly material" behavior. 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." On another occasion
he wrote, somewhat ambiguously: "I like boys
a lot, but the girls are even nicer. If I
tire of her as a girl, she'll play the 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 Christ and the tenets
of Christian theology, and criticizing its
history as a "hodgepodge of fallacy 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. He was one of the
central figures in a great flowering of a
highly influential Neo-Spinozism occurred
in German philosophy and literature of the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.—that
was the first remarkable Spinoza revival in
history. Like Lessing and Herder, in many
respects, Goethe was a devoted Spinozist.
He was also a pantheist, like some other prominent
Spinozists such as Flaubert and Einstein.
His later spiritual perspective incorporated
elements of pantheism (heavily influenced
by Spinoza's thought), humanism, and various
elements of Western esotericism, as seen most
vividly in part 2 of Faust. Like Heinrich
Heine, Nietzsche, in his writings, frequently
mentions Goethe and Spinoza as a pair. In
the late 19th century 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." And again, "When I speak of Plato,
Pascal, Spinoza and Goethe, I know that their
blood flows in mine—I am proud, when I tell
the truth about them—the family is good
enough not to have to poeticize or to conceal;".
In 1884, Nietzsche restated, "My ancestors
Heraclitus, Empedocles, Spinoza, Goethe" ("meine
Vorfahren Heraclit Empedocles Spinoza Goethe").
From Nietzsche's point of view, Goethe was
"not a German event, but a European one: a
magnificent attempt to overcome the eighteenth
century by a return to nature," and "he sought
help from history, natural science, antiquity,
and also Spinoza..." 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 Jewish-pagan
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."Politically, Goethe described
himself as a "moderate liberal", expressing
sympathy for the liberalism of Étienne Dumont.
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.
Goethe was a Freemason, joining the lodge
Amalia in Weimar in 1780, and frequently alluded
to Masonic themes of universal brotherhood
in his work. Although often requested to write
poems arousing nationalist passions, Goethe
would always decline. In old age, he explained
why this was so to Eckermann:How could I write
songs of hatred when I felt no hate? And,
between ourselves, I never hated the French,
although I thanked God when we were rid of
them. How could I, to whom the only significant
things are civilization [Kultur] and barbarism,
hate a nation which is among the most cultivated
in the world, and to which I owe a great part
of my own culture? In any case this business
of hatred between nations is a curious thing.
You will always find it more powerful and
barbarous on the lowest levels of civilization.
But there exists a level at which it wholly
disappears, and where one stands, so to speak,
above the nations, and feels the weal or woe
of a neighboring people as though it were
one's own.
== Influence ==
Goethe had a great effect on the nineteenth
century. In many respects, he was the originator
of many ideas which later became 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, 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.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 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.
Goethe was also a cultural force. During his
first meeting with Napoleon in 1808, the latter
famously remarked: "Vous étes un homme (You
are a man)!" The two discussed politics, the
writings of Voltaire, and Goethe's Sorrows
of Young Werther, which Napoleon had read
seven times and ranked among his favorites.
Goethe came away from the meeting deeply impressed
with Napoleon's enlightened intellect and
his efforts to build an alternative to the
corrupt old regime. Goethe always spoke of
Napoleon with the greatest respect, confessing
that "nothing higher and more pleasing could
have happened to me in all my life" than to
have met Napoleon in person.
Germaine de Staël, in De L'Allemagne (1813),
presented German Classicism and Romanticism
as a potential source of spiritual authority
for Europe, and identified Goethe as a living
classic. She praised Goethe as possessing
"the chief characteristics of the German genius"
and uniting "all that distinguishes the German
mind." Staël's portrayal helped elevate Goethe
over his more famous German contemporaries
and transformed him into a European cultural
hero. Goethe met with her and her partner
Benjamin Constant, with whom he shared a mutual
admiration.In Victorian England, Goethe exerted
a profound influence on George Eliot, whose
partner George Henry Lewes wrote a Life of
Goethe. Eliot presented Goethe as "eminently
the man who helps us to rise to a lofty point
of observation" and praised his "large tolerance",
which "quietly follows the stream of fact
and of life" without passing moral judgments.
Matthew Arnold found in Goethe the "Physician
of the Iron Age" and "the clearest, the largest,
the most helpful thinker of modern times"
with a "large, liberal view of life."
It was to a considerable degree due to Goethe's
reputation that the city of Weimar was chosen
in 1919 as the venue for the national assembly,
convened to draft a new constitution for what
would become known as Germany's Weimar Republic.
Goethe became a key reference for Thomas Mann
in his speeches and essays defending the republic.
He emphasized Goethe's "cultural and self-developing
individualism", humanism, and cosmopolitanism.The
Federal Republic of Germany's cultural institution,
the Goethe-Institut is named after him, and
promotes the study of German abroad and fosters
knowledge about Germany by providing information
on its culture, society and politics.
The literary estate of Goethe in the Goethe
and Schiller Archives was inscribed on UNESCO's
Memory of the World Register in 2001 in recognition
of its historical significance.Goethe's influence
was dramatic because he understood that there
was a transition in European sensibilities,
an increasing focus on sense, the indescribable,
and the emotional. This is not to say that
he was emotionalistic or excessive; on the
contrary, he lauded personal restraint and
felt that excess was a disease: "There is
nothing worse than imagination without taste".
Goethe praised Francis Bacon for his advocacy
of science based on experiment and his forceful
revolution in thought as one of the greatest
strides forward in modern science. However,
he was critical of Bacon's inductive method
and approach based on pure classification.
He said in Scientific Studies:
We conceive of the individual animal as a
small world, existing for its own sake, by
its own means. Every creature is its own reason
to be. All its parts have a direct effect
on one another, a relationship to one another,
thereby constantly renewing the circle of
life; thus we are justified in considering
every animal physiologically perfect. Viewed
from within, no part of the animal is a useless
or arbitrary product of the formative impulse
(as so often thought). Externally, some parts
may seem useless because the inner coherence
of the animal nature has given them this form
without regard to outer circumstance. Thus...[not]
the question, What are they for? but rather,
Where do they come from?
Goethe's scientific and aesthetic ideas have
much in common with Denis Diderot, whose work
he translated and studied. Both Diderot and
Goethe exhibited a repugnance towards the
mathematical interpretation of nature; both
perceived the universe as dynamic and in constant
flux; both saw "art and science as compatible
disciplines linked by common imaginative processes";
and both grasped "the unconscious impulses
underlying mental creation in all forms."
Goethe's Naturanschauer is in many ways a
sequel to Diderot's interprète de la nature.His
views make him, along with Adam Smith, Thomas
Jefferson, and Ludwig van Beethoven, a figure
in two worlds: on the one hand, devoted to
the sense of taste, order, and finely crafted
detail, which is the hallmark of the artistic
sense of the Age of Reason and the neo-classical
period of architecture; on the other, seeking
a personal, intuitive, and personalized form
of expression and society, firmly supporting
the idea of self-regulating and organic systems.
George Henry Lewes celebrated Goethe's revolutionary
understanding of the organism.Thinkers such
as Ralph Waldo Emerson would take up many
similar ideas in the 1800s. Goethe's ideas
on evolution would frame the question that
Darwin and Wallace would approach within the
scientific paradigm. The Serbian inventor
and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla was heavily
influenced by Goethe's Faust, his favorite
poem, and had actually memorized the entire
text. It was while reciting a certain verse
that he was struck with the epiphany that
would lead to the idea of the rotating magnetic
field and ultimately, alternating current.
== Bibliography ==
Goethe's Path to Creativity. A Psycho-Biography
of the Eminent Politician, Scientist and Poet
by Rainer M. Holm-Hadulla
The Life of Goethe by George Henry Lewes
Goethe: The History of a Man by Emil Ludwig
Goethe by Georg Brandes. Authorized translation
from the Danish (2nd ed. 1916) by Allen W.
Porterfield, New York, Crown publishers, 1936.
"Crown edition, 1936." Title Wolfgang Goethe
Goethe: his life and times by Richard Friedenthal
Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns by Thomas
Mann
Conversations with Goethe by Johann Peter
Eckermann
Goethe's World: as seen in letters and memoirs
ed. by Berthold Biermann
Goethe: Four Studies by Albert Schweitzer
Goethe Poet and Thinker by E.M. Wilkinson
and L.A. Willoughby
Goethe and his Publishers by Siegfried Unseld
Goethe by T.J. Reed
Goethe. A Psychoanalytic Study, by Kurt R.
Eissler
The Life of Goethe. A Critical Biography by
John Williams
Goethe: The Poet and the Age (2 Vols.), by
Nicholas Boyle
Goethe's Concept of the Daemonic: After the
Ancients, by Angus Nicholls
Goethe and Rousseau: Resonances of their Mind,
by Carl Hammer, Jr.
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 , by Louis Pagel
Goethe and Schiller, Essays on German Literature,
by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
Tales for Transformation, trans. Scott Thompson
Goethe-Wörterbuch (Goethe Dictionary, abbreviated
GWb). Herausgegeben von der Berlin-Brandenburgischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften, der Akademie
der Wissenschaften in Göttingen und der Heidelberger
Akademie der Wissenschaften. Stuttgart. Verlag
W. Kohlhammer; ISBN 978-3-17-019121-1
== See also ==
Young Goethe in Love (2010)
Dora Stock – her encounters with the 16-year-old
Goethe.
Goethe Basin
Johann-Wolfgang-von-Goethe-Gymnasium
W.H. Murray – author of misattributed quotation
"Until one is committed ..."
Nature (Tobler essay), essay often mis-attributed
to GoetheAwards named after him
Goethe Awards
Goethe Prize
Hanseatic Goethe Prize
