Life of Johann Wolfgang Goethe

“Great Writers.” EDITED BY PROFESSOR ERIC S. ROBERTSON, M.A.
LIFE OF GOETHE.

BY JAMES SIME ——— LONDON WALTER SCOTT, 24 WARWICK LANE NEW YORK: THOMAS WHITTAKER TORONTO: W. J. GAGE & CO. 1888 ( All rights reserved. )

THE best sources of information about Goethe are his own works and letters. It would be ungrateful, however, not to acknowledge the service which has been rendered to students of his character and genius by various German scholars. Among the writers whose researches I myself have found helpful, I may name Heinrich Düntzer, Herman Grimm, Karl Biedermann, and Erich Schmidt.
J. S.
JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main on the 28th of August, 1749.
His grandfather, Frederick George Goethe, who sprang from a family belonging to the working class, and was himself a tailor, made his way, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, from Artern on the Unstrut to Frankfort. Here he settled, and, early in the eighteenth century, took as his second wife a handsome widow of thirty-seven, Cornelia Schelhorn, the owner of the inn, “Zum Weidenhof.” Frederick George is said to have been a man of pleasant manners and a skilful musician. His second wife was in every way worthy of him, an energetic and kindly woman, with all the gracious qualities evoked in generous natures by prosperous circumstances. They had three children, of whom Johann Kaspar, Goethe’s father, born on the 27th of July, 1710, was the youngest.
Johann Kaspar Goethe was sent to school at Coburg, where he heard of the death of his father and only brother. Afterwards he studied law at the Universities of Leipsic and Giessen, and took the degree of Doctor of Jurisprudence. He practised for some time at the imperial chamber at Wetzlar, and then travelled in Italy. Finally he returned for life to Frankfort, where he lived with his mother in a house she had bought in a street called the Hirschgraben. His mother’s fortune made it unnecessary for him to accept any fixed appointment, and during the reign of the Emperor Charles VII. he attained a position of considerable dignity by securing the title of an imperial councillor (Rath). He was somewhat pedantic, capable of vehement outbursts of anger, but honest to the core; and he combined with a sound knowledge of law, a real love for art and literature. He had given much attention to Italian, and was an ardent student of Tasso, his favourite author.