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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832),
German poet, dramatist, novelist, and scientist,
born in Frankfurt. One of the great masters of world
literature, his genius embraced most fields of human
endeavor; his art and thought are epitomized in his
great dramatic poem Faust.
Goethe describes his happy and
sheltered childhood in his autobiography,
Dichtung und Wahrheit (1811–33). In 1765 he went
to Leipzig to study law. There he spent his time in
the usual student dissipations, which perhaps
contributed to a hemorrhage that required a long
convalescence at Frankfurt. His earliest lyric
poems, set to music, were published in 1769. In
1770–71 he completed his law studies at Strasbourg,
where the acquaintance of Herder filled him with
enthusiasm for Shakespeare, for Germany’s medieval
past, and for the German folk song.
Goethe first attracted public notice with the drama Götz von
Berlichingen (1773), a pure product of Sturm
und Drang. Still more important was the epistolary
novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774,
The Sorrows of Young Werther) which Goethe,
on the verge of suicide, wrote after his unrequited
love for Charlotte Buff. Werther gave him immediate
fame and was widely translated. While the writing
had helped Goethe regain stability, the novel’s
effect on the public was the opposite; it encouraged
morbid sensibility.
In 1775, Goethe was invited to
visit Charles Augustus, duke of Saxe-Weimar, at
whose court he was to spend the rest of his life.
For ten years Goethe was chief minister of state at
Weimar. He later retained only the directorship of
the state theater and the scientific institutions.
A trip to Italy (1786–88) fired
his enthusiasm for the classical ideal, as Goethe
tells us in his travel account Die italienische
Reise (1816). Also written under the classical
impact were the historical drama Egmont
(1788), well known for Beethoven’s incidental music;
Römische Elegien (1788); the psychological
drama Torquato Tasso (1789); the domestic
epic Hermann und Dorothea (1797); and the
final, poetic version (1787) of the drama
Iphigenie auf Tauris.
In 1792 Goethe
accompanied Duke Charles Augustus as official
historian in the allied campaign against
revolutionary France. He appreciated the principles
of the French Revolution but resented the methods
employed. A reformer in his own small state, Goethe
wished to see social change accomplished from above.
Later he refused to share in the patriotic fervor
that swept Germany during the Napoleonic Wars.
His novel Die
Wahlverwandtschaften (1809, Elective
Affinities) is one of his most significant
novels, but perhaps his best-known work in that
genre is the Wilhelm Meister series. The novel
Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1796, The
Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister), became the
prototype of the German Bildungsroman, or novel of
character development. In 1829 the last installment
of Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (Wilhelm
Meister’s Journeyman Years), a series of
episodes, was published.
His most enduring work, indeed, one of the peaks of world
literature, is the dramatic poem Faust. The
first part was published in 1808, the second shortly
after Goethe’s death. Goethe recast the traditional
Faust legend and made it one of the greatest poetic
and philosophic creations the world possesses. His
main departure from the original is no doubt the
salvation of Faust, the erring seeker, in the mystic
last scene of the second part.
Goethe’s aim was to
make his life a concrete example of the full range
of human potential, and he succeeded as few others
did. The friendship of Friedrich von Schiller and
his death (1805) made a deep impression on Goethe.
It would be difficult to overestimate Goethe’s
influence on the subsequent history of German
literature. |
