JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
(1749–1832)
The greatest literary genius that Germany has produced was born and spent his early years at Frankfort-on-the-Main, then capital of the German confederation. His later youth was spent in preparation for the bar at Leipsic and Strasburg.
By 1775 he had rendered himself famous by his drama "Götz von Berlichingen" and his novel, "The Sorrows of Werther." In that year he removed to Weimar, which soon because of him became the intellectual Mecca of Germany. He found a true friend in Karl August, Duke of Weimar, and throughout his long life occupied one after another of the chief offices of that little state. In the succeeding years appeared many dramas and other works, principal among the former being "Iphigenia," "Tasso," and "Egmont."
The year 1789 witnessed the beginning of his acquaintance with Schiller, then professor of history at Jena. Schiller had established a literary journal "Die Horen," to which Goethe contributed his "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship." And in the same year, 1796, Goethe and Schiller wrote between them some six hundred "Xenien," pithy sayings on the philosophic tendencies of the age. The next year Goethe published his "Hermann and Dorothea," a romance in verse and one of his best works. Schiller removed to Weimar in 1799, and Germany's two foremost poets worked together until the death of Schiller in 1805.
Until his death, twenty-seven years later, Goethe was unceasingly busy. Not satisfied with being preëminent in literature, he plunged into anatomy, vegetable physiology, and optics, in each of which, far from simply playing the amateur, he rendered permanent service to science.
Throughout his whole life he labored at that greatest of all German dramas, "Faust." Begun as early as 1774, it first appeared in 1790 and then only as a 'fragment.' Urged by Schiller, he took it up again, and in 1808 the First Part was issued; the Second Part, only after his death, in 1833. This Second Part is as deep in its thought and philosophy as any poetic work that has been written; it has been the subject of study and meditation by all the great thinkers since its publication.
THE MAN
1. Give Heine's description of Goethe's personal appearance. VI, 389.