The Archangel Michael with horrible dragon around his feet writhing:
But as they are I have left them all dingy, for fear of the charges.”
The father of some boy friends of Goethe’s, a Herr von Senckenberg, “lived at the corner of Hare Street, which took its name from a sign on the house that represented one hare at least if not three hares.” Von Senckenberg’s three sons were consequently called the “three hares,” which nickname they could not shake off for a long while.
AVX TROIS LAPINS
It was in the “Golden Lion” at Frankfurt that Voltaire was arrested and interned on his word of honor until his luggage containing the stolen “Œuvre de Poésies” of Frederic the Great should arrive. In these poems the king had ridiculed several crowned heads, and it was of the utmost importance for him to get them back before the revengeful Frenchman could make use of them against him. But for some reason or other the trunks did not arrive, and Voltaire, losing patience and “without warning anybody, privately revoked said word of honor” and tried to escape, an attempt that failed and ended in a tragic-comic fashion. Father Goethe, who loved to tell this story to his children as a warning example never to seek the favors of princes, does not agree here with Carlyle in the name of the tavern, but says it was “The Rose” in which “this extraordinary poet and writer was held as a prisoner for a considerable time.” When the fugitive was brought back, the landlord of the tavern refused to take him in again, and the “Bock” became for the rest of the time his involuntary lodging-place.
In spite of this bad example and his father’s distinct warnings, Goethe in 1778 accepted the invitation of the Duke of Weimar to the “Römische Kaiser” in Frankfurt, where he was “joyfully and graciously” received, and where definite arrangements were made for his removal to Weimar.
After the death of Goethe’s father, Mutter Aja sold the old homestead on the Hirschgraben and took a flat in the “Goldenen Brunnen” on the Rossmarket, where the golden fountain of her good humor continued to flow for all her friends, but where she no longer had such facilities for entertaining guests as in the roomy house of old. When, therefore, her daughter-in-law and her grandson, the “liebe Augst,” came to visit her, she ordered rooms for them in “The Swan.” Her apartment in the “Golden Fountain” we know from her own lively description in a letter to her son, who visited her here several times before her death in 1808.
Let us now accompany the student Goethe to Strassburg and pay a visit to the inn “Zum Geist,” where his friendship with Herder, so important for his future development, was formed. “I visited Herder morning and evening, I even remained whole days with him ... and daily learned to appreciate his beautiful and great qualities, his extensive knowledge, and his profound views.” In Leipzig, the next university where Goethe studied, he lived in a house, between the old and the new market, which was called after its sign “Die Feuerkugel.” One of the first calls he made was to the literary dictator Gottsched, who “lived very respectably in the first story of the ‘Golden Bear,’ where the elder Breitkopf, on account of the great advantage which Gottsched’s writings had brought to the trade, had assured him a lodging for life.” This Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf was the inventor of music printing and the founder of the famous publishing firm of to-day. His house, the “Golden Bear,” number 11 Universitätsstrasse, is to-day the home of the Royal Saxon Institute for universal history and the history of civilization, founded by the distinguished historian Lamprecht. In Goethe’s day Breitkopf’s son built a great new house opposite the “Golden Bear” which was called “Zum Silbernen Bären.”
A very popular sign in those days, in Germany, and especially in the neighborhood of Frankfurt, was the pentacle. Goethe calls it simply the beer-sign in his autobiography, where he tells us a charming story based on an ingenious and humorous interpretation of the two triangles which compose the sign. While still living as a young lawyer in Mutter Aja’s house, he entertained two distinguished visitors, the famous Lavater and the educational reformer Basedow. To amuse them he arranged carriage drives in the pleasant country around his native town. We see the young fire-brand sitting between these two dignified men:—