Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

German writer, poet, and scholar

• Born: August 28, 1749
• Birthplace: Frankfurt am Main (now in Germany)
• Died: March 22, 1832
• Place of death: Weimar, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenbach (now in Germany)

Goethe, whose lyric, dramatic, and narrative talents produced literary works of lasting influence on the Western tradition, is considered one of the greatest of all German writers. An amateur scientist and able administrator, Goethe was a truly gifted man of his time.

Early Life

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (yo-HAHN VAWLF-gahng fawn GUHR-tuh) was born into a financially well-established family in the cosmopolitan city of Frankfurt am Main. His father, Johann, was a serious man, who retired from his law practice early and devoted himself to the education of his children. His mother, Katharine Elisabeth, was of a more lighthearted nature and stimulated the imaginative and artistic faculties of her children. From 1765 to 1768, Goethe studied law (at his father’s request) at the University of Leipzig. In August, 1768, he became gravely ill with a lung ailment and returned to Frankfurt to recuperate. He remained there with his family until March, 1770, and then moved to Strassburg to complete his studies.

Life’s Work

From April, 1770, to August, 1771, Goethe studied law in Strassburg; the period was a pivotal one for his development. He was of a literary nature and had never been interested in pursuing a law career. In Strassburg, he met Johann Gottfried Herder, an intense and brilliant man of letters, who encouraged Goethe’s writing efforts. In Sesenheim, a small village outside the city, Goethe wooed a young woman, Frederike Brion, who inspired some of his best early poetry. His poems brought a vitality and freshness of image and theme to the discourse of the lyric. During the first half of the eighteenth century, German letters had reached a stasis in that the various genres had become rather mannered and stylized, often under the influence of prior Latin and French models. Goethe’s older contemporaries, such as the poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and the dramatist Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, had begun to create a new vision of the literary arts, and Goethe brought this impetus to fruition. He is considered the major representative of the dynamic Sturm und Drang period of German literature.

Filled with youthful bravado and creative energy, the young Goethe was a genial spirit—discussion of the creative genius was current at the time—and his early poems and plays are populated with titanic individuals involved in great deeds. His play Götz von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand (1773; Götz von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand, 1799) is fueled by the dramatic energy of the Shakespearean stage and portrays the monumental life of a renegade knight in the late Middle Ages as he struggles to maintain his independence against the imperial intrigues of the Bamberg court. After receiving his law degree, Goethe began a practice in the city of Wetzlar and became involved with another woman, Charlotte Buff, who was engaged at the time. In great emotional distress, he left the city in 1772. His epistolary novelDie Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774; The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1779) is partly autobiographical and relates the tragic fate of a young man who is caught in a love triangle and whose intense emotions drive him to suicide. The book was a European best-seller and the favorite reading matter of Napoleon I.

In 1775, Goethe was appointed adviser to Karl August, the young duke of Weimar, and moved to that city. He became involved with various administrative projects (such as road construction and mining) in the small duchy. In Weimar he also made the acquaintance of an older woman, Charlotte von Stein, who sought to cultivate the rather impetuous young writer. At the Weimar court, Goethe matured under her guidance, and his literary production exchanged its Sturm und Drang intensity for the more measured tone and form of the neoclassical movement of the late eighteenth century. His play Iphigenie auf Tauris (1779; Iphigenia in Taurus, 1793) was written in iambic meter and presents an adaptation of the play by Euripides that deals with a part of the legendary Trojan War. Iphigenia was the daughter of King Agamemnon, who sacrificed her to the gods so that the Greek fleet might find favorable winds for their journey to besiege Troy. Goethe’s version stresses in the title figure a vision of the ethically exemplary individual whose behavior exerts a morally didactic influence of moderation and mutual respect upon those around her.

From 1786 to 1788, Goethe traveled extensively in Italy and then returned to the Weimar court. In July, 1788, he met a young woman, Christiane Vulpius, with whom he lived in a common-law marriage for many years and with whom he had several children. Goethe continued to serve in various official capacities (including theater director) in Weimar, while working on his literary projects. After Goethe returned from his trip to Italy, he composed the Römische Elegien (1793; Roman Elegies, 1876), love poems that were modeled after the classical elegy form.

Goethe’s Bildungsroman, or novel of education, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795-1796; Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, 1824), established the model for this narrative subgenre. It deals with the developmental years of a businessman’s son as he seeks his place in life and becomes involved with a group of actors on their travels through Germany. Through a series of trials and errors, he encounters a number of different individuals and attains in the end what Goethe held to be a well-rounded personality, that is, one whose contemplative-artistic and practical-committed sides have achieved a degree of harmony. A life dedicated to the service of humanity is presented as the ultimate goal of Wilhelm’s development.

Goethe befriended the contemporary German poet and dramatist Friedrich Schiller, and the two maintained an active correspondence and collaborated on a well-known literary journal. During these years, Goethe was also actively engaged in various kinds of scientific research, especially comparative morphology and the theory of light refraction. He is credited with the discovery of a particular small bone in the human jaw. In Zur Farbenlehre (1810; Theory of Colors, 1840), he sought, in a fanciful way, to counter the prevailing light refraction theory of Sir Isaac Newton.

In 1809, Goethe started writing his autobiography, Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit (1811-1814, 1833; The Autobiography of Goethe, 1824). During this same year, he also wrote another novel, Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809; Elective Affinities, 1849), a complex text that uses the symbolic image of chemical attraction and repulsion to examine the conflicting interactions of fated passion and moral self-restraint in four individuals. In the following years, Goethe published another volume of poetry, West-östlicher Divan (1819; West-Eastern Divan, 1877), a collection of love lyrics influenced by the fourteenth century Persian poet Hafiz.

In 1808, Goethe published the first part of his dramatic poem Faust: Eine Tragödie (1808; The Tragedy of Faust, 1823), his best-known and most widely read work. The final editions are written in a variety of metrical patterns and rhyme schemes. He had begun working on an early version of the story—a late medieval legend that had become a popular chapbook in 1587—during his student stays in Strassburg. It is the story of a learned man, a scholar and professor named Heinrich Faust, who makes a pact with a devil, Mephistopheles, in order to gain a godlike understanding of the universe.

In the first part of the poem, the devil rejuvenates the aging Faust, and the latter falls in love with an innocent young girl named Gretchen. Through the diabolical aid of Mephistopheles that leads to the deaths of Gretchen’s mother and brother, Faust manages to seduce Gretchen, and she becomes pregnant. Faust abandons her; she murders her baby and goes insane with guilt. The first part concludes with Gretchen’s execution and Faust’s despair over what he has done. The second part of the Faust tragedy was published in 1833 and is a highly symbolic text in which Faust falls in love with the beautiful Helen of Troy. As an old man, he devotes himself to working on behalf of humanity. When Mephistopheles comes to claim his soul at the moment of death, God intervenes and Faust receives the pardon of divine grace.

Earlier versions of the Faust story, such as the chapbook or Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (c. 1588), are didactic tales that illustrate the essentially corrupt nature of humans. These Faust figures seek wealth and secular power. In these versions, Faust’s soul is condemned to Hell. The character of Goethe’s Faust, however, remains unique and is intended to represent the true spiritual nature of all human beings, that is, a striving for godlike perfection. His Faust seeks divine knowledge and not merely wealth and worldly prestige.

The beginning of the poem contains a prologue in Heaven, in which Mephistopheles wagers with God that he can corrupt Faust, and the latter becomes thereby a kind of Everyman figure. The terms of the pact Mephistopheles makes with the scholar is that the former can satisfy Faust and cause him to say yes to the moment and cease striving for ever-greater knowledge. Although Faust makes serious mistakes in his quest for absolute knowledge, he never stops his efforts and is thus true to his divine nature. He is therefore saved from eternal damnation.

During Goethe’s later years, he was honored as an internationally respected man of letters. Goethe died in Weimar on March 22, 1832. His last words were reputedly “More light!”

Significance

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is a good example of the eighteenth century ideal of the Renaissance man. Like his American contemporary Thomas Jefferson, Goethe sought to encompass many fields of endeavor, from science and political affairs to the various genres of literature. It is in this latter area that he is most famous, and his role in the history of German literature is unparalleled. His literary production in poetry, drama, and fiction set standards that following generations of authors found hard to surpass.

Goethe revitalized the German lyric tradition. His Erlebnislyrik, or poetry of the individual’s emotional or subjective experience, established a tradition that influenced nineteenth century German poets such as Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Nikolaus Lenau, and Eduard Mörike. His dramatic works, along with those of Schiller, form the core of today’s repertoire of classical German theater. His version of the Faust story has been seen as an exemplary tale of the true nature of modern humanity. His narrative texts, especially the novel of education Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, influenced nineteenth century examples of this genre such as the works of the Austrian Adalbert Stifter and the Swiss Gottfried Keller. His highly symbolic yet realistic narrative Elective Affinities also helped to further the tradition of the modern novel.

Goethe’s personal philosophy—as expressed in his literary works—went through a development that echoes the general trends of European culture. His early works, with their emphasis on feeling over intellect as a mode of knowing, are essentially Romantic and follow the rebellious and emotional spirit of other writers and thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau. As he grew older, and in the bloody aftermath of the French Revolution, Goethe tended toward a more conservative point of view and believed that a stoic attitude of self-control, as well as hard work in the service of humankind, was the best that an individual could contribute to the progress of history. Goethe seemed to prefigure the spirit of resignation that informed much of German and European culture and philosophy during the latter half of the nineteenth century. As a leading figure in the literary arts of his age and beyond, Goethe helped to direct the course of German literature and thought.

Bibliography

Bloom, Harold, ed. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003. One in a series of books aimed at high school and college literature students. Includes an introductory essay by Bloom, essays by critics analyzing Goethe’s major works, a short biography, and a chronology.

Boyle, Nicholas. Goethe: The Poet and the Age. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991-2000. This highly praised biography, a lengthy and exhaustively detailed study, combines biographical details, literary criticism, and analysis of political and social developments during Goethe’s lifetime. The first volume, subtitled The Poetry of Desire, covers the period from 1749 until 1790; volume 2, Revolution and Renunciation, recounts events from 1970 until 1803.

Fairley, Barker. A Study of Goethe. New York: Oxford University Press, 1947. An older but classic introduction to Goethe and his writings that is organized by both topics and periods of the author’s life. Contains an index.

Gray, Ronald. Goethe: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1967. An excellent, thorough study of Goethe’s life and major writings by a respected scholar. Contains a selected bibliography and notes.

Hatfield, Henry. Goethe: A Critical Introduction. New York: New Directions, 1963. A well-respected introductory survey of the author’s life and works that is organized chronologically and gives some background information on the period. Contains a brief bibliography and illustrations.

Reed, T. J. Goethe. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. A brief but informative and well-written introduction to Goethe’s life and works that covers all the major texts and is organized by topics. Contains annotated suggestions for further reading and an index.

Sharpe, Lesley, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Goethe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Collection of essays about Goethe’s life and work. Some of the essays examine the world in which he lived; his poetic, dramatic, autobiographical, and other works; his ideas about religion and philosophy; and his reception in Germany and abroad.

Van Abbé, Derek. Goethe: New Perspectives on a Writer and His Time. London: Allen & Unwin, 1972. A brief yet interesting overview of Goethe’s life and works organized in terms of thematic topics. Contains background information on the period.

Williams, John R. The Life of Goethe: A Critical Biography. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1998. A comprehensive overview of Goethe’s life and work, describing his scientific and public activities as well as his literature. Williams places Goethe’s creative work within the context of his life and the literary and political movements of the time. The text cites portions of Goethe’s work, translated into English; contains a bibliography of English-language books about Goethe.