“Then old Frederic, taking snuff,
Looked at Pound and told the rough:
‘Well, if you don’t care
How you really fare,
If with horses or with asses, logs or kings you cart,
Quick unload, drive ME again, and take a start!’”
Goethe’s father, although himself the son of a landlord, disliked inns and public-houses very keenly, as we read in Goethe’s autobiography, “Dichtung und Wahrheit”: “This feeling had rooted itself firmly in him on his travels through Italy, France, and Germany. Although he seldom spoke in images, and only called them to his aid when he was very cheerful, yet he used often to repeat that he always fancied he saw a great cobweb spun across the gate of an inn, so ingeniously that the insects could indeed fly in but that even the privileged wasps could not fly out again unplucked. It seemed to him something horrible, that one should be obliged to pay immoderately for renouncing one’s habits and all that was dear to one in life and living after the manner of publicans and waiters. He praised the hospitality of the olden time, and reluctantly as he otherwise endured even anything unusual in the house, he yet practiced hospitality....” This excessive aversion to all inns the great son inherited from his father, although he admitted it was a weakness. We are therefore not surprised to see the student Goethe, when he for the first time traveled full of longing to Dresden in the yellow coach, lodge in the modest quarters of a philosophical cobbler, whose home seemed to him as romantic and picturesque as an old Dutch painting. Perhaps it was the memory of this interior that inspired Goethe later, when he was called “Doktor Wolf” by his proud mother, to arrange in “The Star” at Weimar, in honor of the Duchess Anna Amalie, a “festivity in clair-obscure” with the distinct purpose of creating a Rembrandt scene.
But before we wander in the far world with the student and doctor, let us take a stroll through the Frankfurt of his childhood and admire the many signs that still decorated, not inns alone, but also, houses of private citizens. The “Goldene Wage,” situated on the Domplatz and built in 1625, as well as the “Grosse Engel,” opposite the Römer, are still standing, and are filled to-day with the treasures of art-loving antiquarians. Recollections of his childhood passed through Goethe’s mind when he described in “Hermann und Dorothea” the pharmacy “Zum Engel,” near the “Golden Lion” on the market-place, and the old bachelor chemist who was too stingy to regild his angel-sign:—
“Who now-a-days can afford to pay for the numerous workmen?
Lately I thought to have new-gilt the figure which stands as my shop-sign,