Life of Johann Wolfgang Goethe

by James Sime

While living at Frankfort, he had for some time had much reason to complain of the conduct of Herder, who for no good cause had conceived a violent prejudice against him. Happily, this had been dispelled; and at Weimar Goethe was able to be of splendid service to his friend. The office of Court preacher and general superintendent of matters ecclesiastical was vacant, and the Duke asked Goethe whether he knew of any one to whom it might be offered. He at once suggested Herder, who was thoroughly tired of his position at Bückeburg, and thinking of accepting a professorship at Göttingen. The majority of the clergy of the duchy were by no means delighted with the proposal, for Herder had the reputation of being a heretic; but Goethe never grudged labour undertaken for a friend, and worked so hard, and with so much tact, in Herder’s interest, that all difficulties were overcome. Herder came to Weimar in 1776, and soon made a great mark, not only as a preacher, but as an earnest promoter of every scheme for the public welfare. At Weimar he wrote his “Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit” (“Ideas towards the Philosophy of the History of Humanity”), which, although only a fragment, displays so wide a knowledge, so firm a grasp of great principles, and so deep an appreciation of all that makes for the highest ideals, that it can never lose its place as one of the treasures of German literature. For many years Goethe and Herder had much pleasant intercourse in Weimar, and encouraged each other in work by mutual sympathy.

The Duke became so attached to Goethe that he was resolved they should never part, and accordingly he expressed to the high officials of his Government his wish that his friend should be admitted into the public service. The proposal met with vehement opposition, for grave old councillors found it impossible to believe that a poet could be capable of attending to business. The Duke, however, warmly supported by his mother, insisted on having his own way.

The elder Goethe strongly disliked the idea of his son entering the service of a prince. Brought up in a free imperial city, he had a decidedly Republican feeling, subject, of course, to loyalty to the Emperor, which was rather a nominal that a real obligation. Moreover, he had always hoped that his son would become an eminent Frankfort lawyer, and that he himself and his wife would have the pleasure of welcoming to their home a daughter-in-law whom they could love. Goethe, however, felt that it would be impossible for him to go back to Frankfort. He had not been happy there; he still disliked the work of an advocate; he longed to be independent; and he knew that he would receive every consideration from the Duke, the Duchess, and the Duchess Dowager, for all of whom he had a sincere regard. On the other hand, he did not wish to bind himself absolutely to remain in Weimar. It was necessary that he should be at liberty to leave it at any time when he might desire to go. This he stated to the Duke, and so the matter was arranged.

In the spring of 1776, Goethe was formally appointed a member of the Privy Council, with the title of “Geheimer Legationsrath,” Privy Councillor of Legation. His salary, which was gradually increased, was at first 1,200 thalers (£180). The Duke, as a special mark of favour, provided for him a house overlooking the Ilm, and surrounded by a pleasant garden. It was in the Park beyond the town, so that Goethe was able to have perfect quiet, and to enjoy to his heart’s content solitary strolls along the banks of the stream flowing past his dwelling. Here he lived for some years, his household consisting of his valet Seidel, whom he had brought with him from Frankfort; a man servant; and an elderly woman who acted as cook. Afterwards he took a house in Weimar, and spent only the summer months in his garden-house.

By the time he definitely took up his abode in Weimar, he had formed a relation which was to exercise a powerful influence over him during the following ten years—his relation to Charlotte von Stein. In Frankfort he had seen her silhouette, which was to appear in Lavater’s book on Physiognomy. Under it he wrote, “It would be splendid to see how the world reflects itself in this soul. She sees the world as it is, yet through the medium of love. Mildness is, therefore, the general impression.” So vividly did the face appear before him that it kept him awake during three successive nights. On the other hand, Frau von Stein was familiar with, and strongly admired, Goethe’s writings. They were thus prepared to think well of one another.

When Goethe arrived in Weimar, she was at her estate, Kochberg; but she soon returned, and he was introduced to her at court by the Duke. She was six years older than Goethe, had been married eleven years, and was the mother of seven children; and she had no very remarkable intellectual gifts. She had, however, delicate grace and beauty, fine tact, and warm sympathy with all that seemed to her best and greatest in life and literature; and these qualities drew Goethe towards her with an irresistible attraction. At first his expressions of regard and admiration—after the fashion of the time—were so ardent that she was rather alarmed, and took care that he should not see her too often; but by and by he showed the most tender respect for her wishes, and so there grew up between them a true, pure, and noble friendship. There were few days when they did not meet. When either was from home, he sent her long letters telling her everything that happened; and even when both were in Weimar, little notes containing kindly greetings constantly passed between them. Goethe confided to her all his cares and anxieties, and she never failed to strengthen him, and give him fresh courage, by her sympathy. His thoughts, studies, and plans of work he also spoke of, and she sought not only to understand them and to share the pleasure they gave him, but to encourage him in all his high undertakings. If sometimes there were misunderstandings, they soon vanished, and Goethe could write to her that the torment due to such experiences was “the sunlit rain (Sonnen-Regen) of love.”

With Frau von Stein’s husband, who held the office of master of the horse, Goethe was on the best of terms. He was a sensible, practical person, who did not interfere with his wife’s friendships; and the idea that there was any reason why he should be jealous of Goethe seems never to have entered his mind. Goethe’s letters to her were often enclosed in letters to her husband. Her children always welcomed Goethe with cries of delight. In this respect they were not different from other children; it was one of his characteristics that young people invariably felt, by a kind of instinct, that he was their friend.

While attending the University of Leipsic, he had been much impressed by the singing of a young public singer called Corona Schröter, and during a short visit to Leipsic in 1776, all his old enthusiasm for her was revived. The result was that she was asked to come to Weimar as a singer in the chamber concerts of the Duchess Dowager. She accepted the invitation, and spent at Weimar the greater part of the rest of her life. She was very handsome, and not only a good singer, but an admirable actress. Goethe was thrown much into her society, and liked her so well that she necessarily has a place in his biography. She was not, however, one of the women who left their mark deeply on his inward life and on his poetry.

A profound change passed over Goethe’s character during the early years of his residence at Weimar. This change was partly a natural evolution, partly the result of deliberate and long-continued effort. He became painfully conscious of the fact that in the past he had allowed himself to be swayed too much by momentary impulses, that he had cherished wild desires which had no real relation to the facts of existence, that his happiness had been at the mercy of passing moods, some of the darkest of which had sprung from too intense a concentration of thought on his own feelings. It became his fixed purpose that all this should come to an end, that he should acquire firm control over himself, and that his powers should be disciplined to work steadily for lofty but clearly-defined and attainable ends. “A calm glance back on my past life,” he wrote in his diary on the 7th of August, 1779, “on the confusion, restlessness, lust after knowledge, of youth, how it roams about everywhere to find something satisfying. How, especially, I found delight in mysteries—in dark, imaginary relations. How, when occupied with anything scientific, I only half attacked it, and soon let it pass; how a sort of humble self-complacency goes through all I then wrote. With how little insight I moved round and round in human and divine things. How there was as little of action as of thought and poetry directed to an aim; how many days were wasted in time-destroying sentiment and shadow-passions; how little good came to me therefrom; and how, now that the half of life is past, there is no way back, but I simply stand here as one who has saved himself from the water, and whom the sun begins beneficently to dry. The time I have spent in the rush of the world, since October, ’75, I do not yet trust myself to review. God help further and give lights, so that we may not stand so much in our own way; cause us to do from morning to night what is fitting; and give us clear ideas of the consequences of things, so that one may not be like men who complain all day of headache and dose themselves for headache, and every evening take too much wine! May the idea of purity, extending itself even to the morsel I take into my mouth, become ever more luminous in me!” On the 13th of May, 1780, he wrote: “In my present surroundings, I have little, hardly any, hindrance outside of myself. In myself there is still much. Human frailties are thorough tapeworms; one tears away a piece, but the stock remains where it was. I will yet, however, be master. No one save he who wholly renounces self is worthy to rule, or can rule.”

How sternly he disciplined himself, and with what magnificent success, we may see from the manner in which he discharged his duties at Weimar. It must have been hard for a poet of quick sensibilities to grapple with the difficulties of business, yet he shrank from no obligation, however severe the demands it might make on his temper and patience. The sittings of the Privy Council he attended with strict regularity, and he made a point of mastering every important document submitted to it, so that his judgment might be of real service to the State. He devoted especial attention to questions connected with finance, and so wisely did he deal with them, seeking to secure at once economy and efficiency, that he excited the astonishment and admiration of those who had doubted the fitness of a poet for the practical work of life.