​GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON (1749–1832), Germanpoet, dramatist and philosopher, was born at Frankfort-on-Mainon the 28th of August 1749. He came, on his father’s side, ofThuringian stock, his great-grandfather, Hans Christian Goethe,having been a farrier at Artern-on-the-Unstrut, about themiddle of the 17th century. Hans Christian’s son, FriedrichGeorg, was brought up to the trade of a tailor, and in thiscapacity settled in Frankfort in 1686. A second marriage,however, brought him into possession of the Frankfort inn,“Zum Weidenhof,” and he ended his days as a well-to-doinnkeeper. His son, Johann Kaspar, the poet’s father (1710–1782),studied law at Leipzig, and, after going through the prescribedcourses of practical training at Wetzlar, travelled in Italy.He hoped, on his return to Frankfort, to obtain an officialposition in the government of the free city, but his personalinfluence with the authorities was not sufficiently strong. Inhis disappointment he resolved never again to offer his servicesto his native town, and retired into private life, a course whichhis ample means facilitated. In 1742 he acquired, as a consolationfor the public career he had missed, the title ofkaiserlicherRat, and in 1748 married Katharina Elisabeth (1731–1808),daughter of theSchultheiss orBürgermeister of Frankfort,Johann Wolfgang Textor. The poet was the eldest son of thisunion. Of the later children only one, Cornelia, born in 1750,survived the years of childhood; she died as the wife of Goethe’sfriend, J. G. Schlosser, in 1777. The best elements in Goethe’sgenius came from his mother’s side; of a lively, impulsivedisposition, and gifted with remarkable imaginative power,Frau Rat was the ideal mother of a poet; moreover, beinghardly eighteen at the time of her son’s birth, she was herselfable to be the companion of his childhood. From his father,whose stern, somewhat pedantic nature repelled warmer feelingson the part of the children, Goethe inherited that “holyearnestness” and stability of character which brought him unscathedthrough temptations and passions, and held the balance to hisall too powerful imagination.

Unforgettable is the picture which the poet subsequentlydrew of his childhood spent in the large house with its manynooks and crannies, in the Grosse Hirschgraben at Frankfort.Books, pictures, objects of art, antiquities, reminiscences ofRat Goethe’s visit to Italy, above all a marionette theatre,kindled the child’s quick intellect and imagination. His trainingwas conducted in its early stages by his father, and was latersupplemented by tutors. Meanwhile the varied and picturesquelife of Frankfort was in itself an education. In 1759, during theSeven Years’ War, the French, as Maria Theresa’s allies, occupiedthe town, and, much to the irritation of Goethe’s father, whowas a stanch partisan of Frederick the Great, a Frenchlieutenant, Count Thoranc, was quartered on the Goethe household.The foreign occupation also led to the establishment of a Frenchtroupe of actors, and to their performances the boy, through hisgrandfather’s influence, had free access. Goethe has also recordedhis memories of another picturesque event, the coronation of theemperor Joseph II. in the Frankfort Römer or town hall in 1764;but these memories were darkened by being associated in hismind with the tragic dénouement of his first love affair. Theobject of this passion was a certain Gretchen, who seems to havetaken advantage of the boy’s interest in her to further thedishonest ends of one of her friends. The discovery of the affairand the investigation that followed cooled Goethe’s ardour andcaused him to turn his attention seriously to the studies whichwere to prepare him for the university. Meanwhile the literaryinstinct had begun to show itself; we hear of a novel in letters—akind of linguistic exercise, in which the characters carried on the correspondence in different languages—of a prose epic on the subject of Joseph, and various religious poems of which one,Die Höllenfahrt Christi, found its way in a revised form into the poet’s complete works.

In October 1765, Goethe, then a little over sixteen, left Frankfort for Leipzig, where a wider and, in many respects, less provincial life awaited him. He entered upon his university studies with zeal, but his own education in Frankfort had not been the best preparation for the scholastic methods which still dominated the German universities; of his professors, only Gellert seems to have won his interest, and that interest was soon exhausted. The literary beginnings he had made in Frankfort now seemed to him amateurish and trivial; he felt that he had to turn over a new leaf, and, under the guidance of E. W. Behrisch, a genial, original comrade, he learned the art of writing those light Anacreontic lyrics which harmonized with the tone of polite Leipzig society. Artificial as this poetry is, Goethe was, nevertheless, inspired by a real passion in Leipzig, namely, for Anna Katharina Schönkopf, the daughter of a wine-merchant at whose house he dined. She is the “Annette” after whom the recently discovered collection of lyrics was named, although it must be added that neither these lyrics nor theNeue Lieder, published in 1770, express very directly Goethe’s feelings for Käthchen Schönkopf. To his Leipzig student-days belong also two small plays in Alexandrines,Die Laune des Verliebten, a pastoral comedy in one act, which reflects the lighter side of the poet’s love affair, andDie Mitschuldigen (published in a revised form, 1769), a more sombre picture, in which comedy is incongruously mingled with tragedy. In Leipzig Goethe also had time for what remained one of the abiding interests of his life, for art; he regarded A. F. Oeser (1717–1799), the director of the academy of painting in the Pleissenburg, who had given him lessons in drawing, as the teacher who in Leipzig had influenced him most. His art studies were also furthered by a short visit to Dresden. His stay in Leipzig came, however, to an abrupt conclusion; the distractions of student life proved too much for his strength; a sudden haemorrhage supervened, and he lay long ill, first in Leipzig, and, after it was possible to remove him, at home in Frankfort. These months of slow recovery were a time of serious introspection for Goethe. He still corresponded with his Leipzig friends, but the tone of his letters changed; life had become graver and more earnest for him. He pored over books on occult philosophy; he busied himself with alchemy and astrology. A friend of his mother’s, Susanne Katharina von Klettenberg, who belonged to pietist circles in Frankfort, turned the boy’s thoughts to religious mysticism. On his recovery his father resolved that he should complete his legal studies at Strassburg, a city which, although then outside the German empire, was, in respect of language and culture, wholly German. From the first moment Goethe set foot in the narrow streets of the Alsatian capital, in April 1770, the whole current of his thought seemed to change. The Gothic architecture of the Strassburg minster became to him the symbol of a national and German ideal, directly antagonistic to the French tastes and the classical and rationalistic atmosphere that prevailed in Leipzig. The second moment of importance in Goethe’s Strassburg period was his meeting with Herder, who spent some weeks in Strassburg undergoing an operation of the eye. In this thinker, who was his senior by five years, Goethe found the master he sought; Herder taught him the significance of Gothic architecture, revealed to him the charm of nature’s simplicity, and inspired him with enthusiasm for Shakespeare and theVolkslied. Meanwhile Goethe’s legal studies were not neglected, and he found time to add to knowledge of other subjects, notably that of medicine. Another factor of importance in Goethe’s Strassburg life was his love for Friederike Brion, the daughter of an Alsatian village pastor in Sesenheim. Even more than Herder’s precept and example, this passion showed Goethe how trivial and artificial had been the Anacreontic and pastoral poetry with which he had occupied himself in Leipzig; and the lyrics inspired by Friederike, such asKleine Blumen,kleine Blätter andWie herrlich leuchtet mir die Natur! mark the beginning of a new epoch in German lyric poetry. The idyll of Sesenheim, as described inDichtung und Wahrheit, is one of the most beautiful love-stories in the literature of the world. From the first, however, it was clear that Friederike Brion could never become the wife of the Frankfort patrician’s son; an unhappy ending to the romance was unavoidable, and, as is to be seen in passionate outpourings like theWanderers Sturmlied, and in the bitter self-accusations ofClavigo, it left deep wounds on the poet’s sensitive soul.

​To Strassburg we owe Goethe’s first important drama,Götzvon Berlichingen, or, as it was called in its earliest form,Geschichte Gottfriedens von Berlichingen dramatisiert (not publisheduntil 1831). Revised under the now familiar title, it appeared in1773, after Goethe’s return to Frankfort. In estimating thisdrama we must bear in mind Goethe’s own Strassburg life, andthe turbulent spirit of his own age, rather than the historical facts,which the poet found in the autobiography of his hero publishedin 1731. The latter supplied only the rough materials; the Götzvon Berlichingen whom Goethe drew, with his lofty ideals ofright and wrong, and his enthusiasm for freedom, is a verydifferent personage from the unscrupulous robber-knight of the16th century, the rough friend of Franz von Sickingen and of therevolting peasants. Still less historical justification is to be foundfor the vacillating Weisslingen in whom Goethe executed poeticjustice on himself as the lover of Friederike, or in the women ofthe play, the gentle Maria, the heartless Adelheid. But there isgenial, creative power in the very subjectivity of these characters,and a vigorous dramatic life, which is irresistible in its appeal.WithGötz von Berlichingen, Shakespeare’s art first triumphed onthe German stage, and the literary movement known asSturmund Drang was inaugurated.

Having received his degree in Strassburg, Goethe returnedhome in August 1771, and began his initiation into the routine ofan advocate’s profession. In the following year, in order to gaininsight into another side of his calling, he spent four months atWetzlar, where the imperial law-courts were established. ButGoethe’s professional duties had only a small share in the eventfulyears which lay between his return from Strassburg and that visitto Weimar at the end of 1775, which turned the whole course ofhis career, and resulted in his permanent attachment to theWeimar court. Goethe’s life in Frankfort was a round of stimulatingliterary intercourse; in J. H. Merck (1741–1791), an armyofficial in the neighbouring town of Darmstadt, he found a friendand mentor, whose irony and common-sense served as a correctiveto his own exuberance of spirits. Wetzlar brought new friendsand another passion, that for Charlotte Buff, the daughter of theAmtmann there—a love-story which has been immortalized inWerthers Leiden—and again the young poet’s nature was obsessedby a love which was this time strong enough to bring him tothe brink of that suicide with which the novel ends. A visit tothe Rhine, where new interests and the attractions of Maximilianevon Laroche, a daughter of Wieland’s friend, the novelist Sophievon Laroche, brought partial healing; his intense preoccupationwith literary work on his return to Frankfort did the rest. In1775 Goethe was attracted by still another type of woman, LiliSchönemann, whose mother was the widow of a wealthy Frankfortbanker. A formal betrothal took place, and the beauty of thelyrics which Lili inspired leaves no room for doubt that here wasa passion no less genuine than that for Friederike or Charlotte.But Goethe—more worldly wise than on former occasions—feltinstinctively that the gay, social world in which Lili moved wasnot really congenial to him. A visit to Switzerland in thesummer of 1775 may not have weakened his interest in her, but itat least allowed him to regard her objectively; and, without tragicconsequences on either side, the passion was ultimately allowed toyield to the dictates of common-sense. Goethe’s departure forWeimar in November made the final break less difficult.

The period from 1771 to 1775 was, in literary respects, themost productive of the poet’s life. It had been inauguratedwithGötz von Berlichingen, and a few months later this tragedywas followed by another,Clavigo, hardly less convincing in itscharacter-drawing, and reflecting even more faithfully than theformer the experiences Goethe had gone through in Strassburg.Again poetic justice is effected on the unfortunate hero whohas chosen his own personal advancement in preference to hisduty to the woman he loves; more pointedly than inGötz isthe moral enforced by Clavigo’s worldly friend Carlos, that theground of Clavigo’s tragic end lies not so much in the defianceof a moral law as in the hero’s vacillation and want of character.WithDie Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774), the literaryprecipitate of the author’s own experiences in Wetzlar, Goethesucceeded in attracting, as no German had done before him,the attention of Europe. Once more it was the gospel that theworld belongs to the strong, which lay beneath the surface ofthis romance. This, however, was not the lesson which wasdrawn from it by Goethe’s contemporaries; they shed tearsof sympathy over the lovelorn youth whose burden becomestoo great for him to bear. WhileGötz inaugurated the manlierside of theSturm und Drang literature,Werther was responsiblefor its sentimental excesses. And to the sentimental ratherthan to the heroic side belongs alsoStella, “a drama for lovers,”in which the poet again reproduced, if with less fidelity than inWerther, certain aspects of his own love troubles. A lightervein is to be observed in various dramatic satires written at thistime, such asGötter,Helden und Wieland (1774),HanswurstsHochzeit,Fastnachtsspiel vom Pater Brey,Satyros, and in theSingspiele,Erwin und Elmire (1775) andClaudine von VillaBella (1776); while in theFrankfurter Gelehrte Anzeiger (1772–1773),Goethe drove home the principles of the new movementofSturm und Drang in terse and pointed criticism. The exuberanceof the young poet’s genius is also to be seen in the manyunfinished fragments of this period; at one time we find himoccupied with dramas onCaesar andMahomet, at another withan epic onDer ewige Jude, and again with a tragedy onPrometheus,of which a magnificent fragment has passed into his works.Greatest of all the torsos of this period, however, was the dramatizationofFaust. Thanks to a manuscript copy of the play inits earliest form—discovered as recently as 1887—we are nowable to distinguish how much of this tragedy was the immediateproduct of theSturm und Drang, and to understand the intentionswith which the young poet began his masterpiece. Goethe’shero changed with the author’s riper experience and with his newconceptions of man’s place and duties in the world, but theGretchen tragedy was taken over into the finished poem, practicallyunaltered, from the earliestFaust of theSturm und Drang.With these wonderful scenes, the most intensely tragic in allGerman literature, Goethe’s poetry in this period reaches itsclimax. Still another important work, however, was conceived,and in large measure written at this time, the drama ofEgmont,which was not published until 1788. This work may, to someextent, be regarded as supplementary toFaust; it presents thelighter, more cheerful and optimistic side of Goethe’s philosophyin these years; Graf Egmont, the most winning and fascinatingof the poet’s heroes, is endowed with that “demonic” powerover the sympathies of men and women, which Goethe himselfpossessed in so high a degree. ButEgmont depends for itsinterest almost solely on two characters, Egmont himself andKlärchen, Gretchen’s counterpart; regarded as a drama, itdemonstrates the futility of that defiance of convention andrules with which theSturm und Drang set out. It remained forGoethe, in the next period of his life, to construct on classicmodels a new vehicle for German dramatic poetry.

In December 1774 the young “hereditary prince” of Weimar, Charles Augustus, passing through Frankfort on his way to Paris, came into personal touch with Goethe, and invited the poet to visit Weimar when, in the following year, he took up the reins of government. In October 1775 the invitation was repeated, and on the 7th of November of that year Goethe arrived in the little Saxon capital which was to remain his home for the rest of his life. During the first few months in Weimar the poet gave himself up to the pleasures of the moment as unreservedly as his patron; indeed, the Weimar court even looked upon him for a time as a tempter who led the young duke astray. But the latter, although himself a mere stripling, had implicit faith in Goethe, and a firm conviction that his genius could be utilized in other fields besides literature. Goethe was not long in Weimar before he was entrusted with responsible state duties, and events soon justified the duke’s confidence. Goethe proved the soul of the Weimar government, and a minister of state of energy and foresight. He interested himself in agriculture, horticulture and mining, which were of paramount importance to the welfare of the duchy, and out of these interests sprang his own love for the natural sciences, which took up so much of his time in later ​years. The inevitable love-interest was also not wanting. AsFriederike had fitted into the background of Goethe’s Strassburglife, Lotte into that of Wetzlar, and Lili into the gaieties ofFrankfort, so now Charlotte von Stein, the wife of a Weimarofficial, was the personification of the more aristocratic ideals ofWeimar society. We possess only the poet’s share of hiscorrespondence with Frau von Stein, but it is possible to infer fromit that, of all Goethe’s loves, this was intellectually the mostworthy of him. Frau von Stein was a woman of refined literarytaste and culture, seven years older than he and the mother ofseven children. There was something more spiritual, somethingthat partook rather of the passionate friendships of the 18thcentury than of love in Goethe’s relations with her. Frau vonStein dominated the poet’s life for twelve years, until his journeyto Italy in 1786–1788. Of other events of this period the mostnotable were two winter journeys, the first in 1777, to the HarzMountains, the second, two years later, to Switzerland—journeyswhich gave Goethe scope for that introspection and reflectionfor which his Weimar life left him little time. On the second ofthese journeys he revisited Friederike in Sesenheim, saw Lili,who had married and settled in Strassburg, and made thepersonal acquaintance of Lavater in Zürich.

The literary results of these years cannot be compared withthose of the preceding period; they are virtually limited to afew wonderful lyrics, such asWanderers Nachtlied,An den Mond,Gesang der Geister über den Wassern, or ballads, such asDerErlkönig, a charming little drama,Die Geschwister (1776), inwhich the poet’s relations to both Lili and Frau von Stein seemto be reflected, a dramatic satire,Der Triumph der Empfindsamkeit(1778), and a number ofSingspiele,Lila (1777),Die Fischerin,Scherz, List und Rache, andJery und Bätely (1780). But greaterworks were in preparation. A religious epic,Die Geheimnisse, anda tragedyElpenor, did not, it is true, advance much furtherthan plans; but in 1777, under the influence of the theatricalexperiments at the Weimar court, Goethe conceived and in greatmeasure wrote a novel of the theatre, which was to have bornethe titleWilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung; and in 1779himself took part in a representation before the court at Ettersburg,of his dramaIphigenie auf Tauris. ThisIphigenie was,however, in prose; in the following year Goethe remoulded itin iambics, but it was not until he went to Rome that the dramafinally received the form in which we know it.

In September, 1786 Goethe set out from Karlsbad—secretlyand stealthily, his plan known only to his servant—on thatmemorable journey to Italy, to which he had looked forwardwith such intense longing; he could not cross the Alps quicklyenough, so impatient was he to set foot in Italy. He travelledby way of Munich, the Brenner and Lago di Garda to Veronaand Venice, and from thence to Rome, where he arrived on the29th of October 1786. Here he gave himself up unreservedlyto the new impressions which crowded on him, and he was soonat home among the German artists in Rome, who welcomed himwarmly. In the spring of 1787 he extended his journey as faras Naples and Sicily, returning to Rome in June 1787, where heremained until his final departure for Germany on the 2nd ofApril 1788. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance ofGoethe’s Italian journey. He himself regarded it as a kind ofclimax to his life; never before had he attained such completeunderstanding of his genius and mission in the world; it affordedhim a vantage-ground from which he could renew the past andmake plans for the future. In Weimar he had felt that he was nolonger in sympathy with theSturm und Drang, but it was Italywhich first taught him clearly what might take the place of thatmovement in German poetry. To the modern reader, whomay well be impressed by Goethe’s extraordinary receptivity,it may seem strange that his interests in Italy were so limited;for, after all, he saw comparatively little of the art treasures ofItaly. He went to Rome in Winckelmann’s footsteps; it wasthe antique he sought, and his interest in the artists of theRenaissance was virtually restricted to their imitation of classicmodels. This search for the classic ideal is reflected in the workshe completed or wrote under the Italian sky. The calm beautyof Greek tragedy is seen in the new iambic version ofIphigenieauf Tauris (1787); the classicism of the Renaissance gives theground-tone to the wonderful drama ofTorquato Tasso (1790),in which the conflict of poetic genius with the prosaic world istransmuted into imperishable poetry. Classic, too, in thissense, were the plans of a drama onIphigenie auf Delphos andof an epic,Nausikaa. Most interesting of all, however, is thereflection of the classic spirit in works already begun in earlierdays, such asEgmont andFaust. The former drama was finishedin Italy and appeared in 1788, the latter was brought a stepfurther forward, part of it being published as aFragment in 1790.

Disappointment in more senses than one awaited Goethe onhis return to Weimar. He came back from Italy with a newphilosophy of life, a philosophy at once classic and pagan, andwith very definite ideas of what constituted literary excellence.But Germany had not advanced; in 1788 his countrymen werestill under the influence of thatSturm und Drang from whichthe poet had fled. The times seemed to him more out of jointthan ever, and he withdrew into himself. Even his relations tothe old friends were changed. Frau von Stein had not knownof his flight to Italy until she received a letter from Rome; buthe looked forward to her welcome on his return. The monthsof absence, however, the change he had undergone, and doubtlessthose lighter loves of which theRömische Elegien bear evidence,weakened the Weimar memories; if he left Weimar as Frau vonStein’s lover he returned only as her friend; and she naturallyresented the change. Goethe, meanwhile, satisfied to continuethe freer customs to which he had adapted himself in Rome,found a new mistress in Christiane Vulpius (1765–1816), theleast interesting of all the women who attracted him. ButChristiane gradually filled up a gap in the poet’s life; she gavehim, quietly, unobtrusively, without making demands on him,the comforts of a home. She was not accepted by court society;it did not matter to her that even Goethe’s intimate friendsignored her; and she, who had suited the poet’s whim when hedesired to shut himself off from all that might dim the recollectionof Italy, became with the years an indispensable helpmate tohim. On the birth in 1789 of his son, Goethe had some thoughtof legalizing his relations with Christiane, but this intention wasnot realized until 1806, when the invasion of Weimar by theFrench made him fear for both life and property.

The period of Goethe’s life which succeeded his return from Italy was restless and unsettled; relieved of his state duties, he returned in 1790 to Venice, only to be disenchanted with the Italy he had loved so intensely a year or two before. A journey with the duke of Weimar to Breslau followed, and in 1792 he accompanied his master on that campaign against France which ended so ingloriously for the German arms at Valmy. In later years Goethe published his account both of thisCampagne inFrankreich and of theBelagerung von Mainz, at which he was also present in 1793. His literary work naturally suffered under these distractions.Tasso, and the edition of theSchriften in which it was to appear, had still to be completed on his return from Italy; theRömische Elegien, perhaps the most Latin of all his works, were published in 1795, and theVenetianische Epigramme, the result of the second visit to Italy, in 1796. The French Revolution, in which all Europe was engrossed, was in Goethe’s eyes only another proof that the passing of the old régime meant the abrogation of all law and order, and he gave voice to his antagonism to the new democratic principles in the dramasDer Grosskophta (1792),Der Bürgergeneral (1793), and in the unfinished fragmentsDie Aufgeregten andDas Mädchenvon Oberkirch. The spirited translation of the epic ofReineckeFuchs (1794) he took up as a relief and an antidote to the social disruption of the time. Two new interests, however, strengthened the ties between Goethe and Weimar,—ties which the Italian journey had threatened to sever: his appointment in 1791 as director of the ducal theatre, a post which he occupied for twenty-two years, and his absorption in scientific studies. In 1790 he published his importantVersuch, die Metamorphose derPflanzen zu erklären, which was an even more fundamental achievement for the new science of comparative morphology ​than his discovery some six years earlier of the existence of aformation in the human jaw-bone analogous to the intermaxillarybone in apes; and in 1791 and 1792 appeared two parts of hisBeiträge zur Optik.

Meanwhile, however, Goethe had again taken up the novelof the theatre which he had begun years before, with a view tofinishing it and including it in the edition of hisNeue Schriften(1792–1800).Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung becameWilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre; the novel of purely theatricalinterests was widened out to embrace the history of a youngman’s apprenticeship to life. The change of plan explains,although it may not exculpate, the formlessness and looseconstruction of the work, its extremes of realistic detail andpoetic allegory. A hero, who was probably originally intendedto demonstrate the failure of the vacillating temperament whenbrought face to face with the problems of art, proved ill-adaptedto demonstrate those precepts for the guidance of life with whichtheLehrjahre closes; unstable of purpose, Wilhelm Meister isnot so much an illustration of the author’s life-philosophy as alay-figure on which he demonstrates his views.Wilhelm Meisteris a work of extraordinary variety, ranging from the commonplacerealism of the troupe of strolling players to the poetic romanticismof Mignon and the harper; its flashes of intuitive criticism andits weighty apothegms add to its value as aBildungsroman inthe best sense of that word. Of all Goethe’s works, this exertedthe most immediate and lasting influence on German literature;it served as a model for the best fiction of the next thirty years.

In completingWilhelm Meister, Goethe found a sympatheticand encouraging critic in Schiller, to whom he owed in greatmeasure his renewed interest in poetry. After years of tentativeapproaches on Schiller’s part, years in which that poet concealedeven from himself his desire for a friendly understanding withGoethe, the favourable moment arrived; it was in June 1794,when Schiller was seeking collaborators for his new periodicalDie Horen; and his invitation addressed to Goethe was thebeginning of a friendship which continued unbroken until theyounger poet’s death. The friendship of Goethe and Schiller,of which their correspondence is a priceless record, had itslimitations; it was purely intellectual in character, a certainbarrier of personal reserve being maintained to the last. Butfor the literary life of both poets the gain was incommensurable.As far as actual work was concerned, Goethe went his own wayas he had always been accustomed to do; but the mere fact thathe devoted himself with increasing interest to literature was dueto Schiller’s stimulus. It was Schiller, too, who induced him toundertake those studies on the nature of epic and dramaticpoetry which resulted in the epic ofHermann und Dorotheaand the fragment of theAchilleis; without the friendship therewould have been noXenien and no ballads, and it was his youngerfriend’s encouragement which induced Goethe to betake himselfonce more to the “misty path” ofFaust, and bring the firstpart of that drama to a conclusion.

Goethe’s share in theXenien (1795) may be briefly dismissed.This collection of distichs, written in collaboration with Schiller,was prompted by the indifference and animosity of contemporarycriticism, and its disregard for what the two poets regarded asthe higher interests of German poetry. TheXenien succeededas a retaliation on the critics, but the masterpieces which followedthem proved in the long run much more effective weaponsagainst the prevailing mediocrity. Prose works like theUnterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten (1795) were unworthy ofthe poet’s genius, and the translation of Benvenuto Cellini’sLife (1796–1797) was only a translation. But in 1798 appearedHermann und Dorothea, one of Goethe’s most perfect poems.It is indeed remarkable—when we consider by how muchreflection and theoretic discussion the composition of the poemwas preceded and accompanied—that it should make upon thereader so simple and “naïve” an impression; in this respectit is the triumph of an art that conceals art. Goethe has heretaken a simple story of village life, mirrored in it the mostpregnant ideas of his time, and presented it with a skill whichmay well be called Homeric; but he has discriminated withthe insight of genius between the Homeric method of reproducingthe heroic life of primitive Greece and the same methodas adapted to the commonplace happenings of 18th-centuryGermany. In this respect he was undoubtedly guided by aforerunner who has more right than he to the attribute “naïve,”by J. H. Voss, the author ofLuise. Hardly less imposing intheir calm, placid perfection are the poems with which, infriendly rivalry, Goethe seconded the more popular balladsof his friend;Der Zauberlehrling,Der Gott und die Bayadere,Die Braut von Korinth,Alexis und Dora,Der neue PausiasandDie schöne Müllerin—a cycle of poems in the style of theVolkslied—areamong the masterpieces of Goethe’s poetry. On the otherhand, even the friendship with Schiller did not help himto add to his reputation as a dramatist.Die natürliche Tochter(1803), in which he began to embody his ideas of the Revolutionon a wide canvas, proved impossible on the stage, and theremaining dramas, which were to have formed a trilogy, werenever written. Goethe’s classic principles, when applied tothe swift, direct art of the theatre, were doomed to failure, andDie natürliche Tochter, notwithstanding its good theoreticintention, remains the most lifeless and shadowy of all his dramas.Even less in touch with the living present were the variousprologues andFestspiele, such asPaläophron und Neoterpe (1800),Was wir bringen (1802), which in these years he composed forthe Weimar theatre.

Goethe’s classicism brought him into inevitable antagonismwith the new Romantic movement which had been inauguratedin 1798 by theAthenaeum, edited by the brothers Schlegel.The sharpness of the conflict was, however, blunted by the factthat, without exception, the young Romantic writers lookedup to Goethe as its master; they modelled their fiction onWilhelm Meister; they regarded his lyrics as the high-watermark of German poetry; Goethe, Novalis declared, was the“Statthalter of poetry on earth.” With regard to painting andsculpture, however, Goethe felt that a protest was necessary,if the insidious ideas propounded in works like Wackenroder’sHerzensergiessungen were not to do irreparable harm, by bringingback the confusion of theSturm und Drang; and, as a rejoinderto the Romantic theories, Goethe, in conjunction with his friendHeinrich Meyer (1760–1832), published from 1798 to 1800 anart review,Die Propyläen. Again, inWinckelmann und seineZeit (1805) Goethe vigorously defended the classical ideals ofwhich Winckelmann had been the founder. But in the end heproved himself the greatest enemy to the strict classic doctrine bythe publication in 1808 of the completed first part ofFaust, awork which was accepted by contemporaries as a triumph ofRomantic art.Faust is a patchwork of many colours. With theaid of the vast body ofFaust literature which has sprung up inrecent years, and the many new documents bearing on its history—aboveall, the so-calledUrfaust, to which reference has alreadybeen made—we are able now to ascribe to their various periodsthe component parts of the work; it is possible to discriminatebetween theSturm und Drang hero of the opening scenes andof the Gretchen tragedy—the contemporary of Götz and Clavigo—andthe superimposed Faust of calmer moral and intellectualideals—a Faust who corresponds to Hermann and WilhelmMeister. In its original form the poem was the dramatizationof a specific and individualized story; in the years of Goethe’sfriendship with Schiller it was extended to embody the higherstrivings of 18th-century humanism; ultimately, as we shall see,it became, in the second part, a vast allegory of human life andactivity. Thus the elements of whichFaust is composed wereeven more difficult to blend than were those ofWilhelm Meister;but the very want of uniformity is one source of the perennialfascination of the tragedy, and has made it in a peculiar degreethe national poem of the German people, the mirror whichreflects the national life and poetry from the outburst ofSturmund Drang to the well-weighed and tranquil classicism of Goethe’sold age.

The third and final period of Goethe’s long life may be said to have begun after Schiller’s death. He never again lost touch with literature as he had done in the years which preceded his ​friendship with Schiller; but he stood in no active or immediateconnexion with the literary movement of his day. His lifemoved on comparatively uneventfully. Even the Napoleonicrégime of 1806–1813 disturbed but little his equanimity. Goethe,the cosmopolitanWeltbürger of the 18th century, had himself novery intense feelings of patriotism, and, having seen Germanyflourish as a group of small states under enlightened despotisms,he had little confidence in the dreamers of 1813 who hopedto see the glories of Barbarossa’s empire revived. Napoleon,moreover, he regarded not as the scourge of Europe, but as thedefender of civilization against the barbarism of the Slavs;and in the famous interview between the two men at Erfurt thepoet’s admiration was reciprocated by the French conqueror.Thus Goethe had no great sympathy for the war of liberationwhich kindled young hearts from one end of Germany to theother; and when the national enthusiasm rose to its highestpitch he buried himself in those optical and morphologicalstudies, which, with increasing years, occupied more and moreof his time and interest.

The works and events of the last twenty-five years of Goethe’slife may be briefly summarized. In 1805, as we have seen, hesuffered an irreparable loss in the death of Schiller; in 1806,Christiane became his legal wife, and to the same year belongsthe magnificent tribute to his dead friend, theEpilog zu SchillersGlocke. Two new friendships about this time kindled in thepoet something of the juvenile fire and passion of younger days.Bettina von Arnim came into personal touch with Goethe in1807, and herBriefwechsel Goethes mit einem Kinde (publishedin 1835) is, in its mingling of truth and fiction, one of the mostdelightful products of the Romantic mind; but the episode wasof less importance for Goethe’s life than Bettina would have usbelieve. On the other hand, his interest in Minna Herzlieb,foster-daughter of the publisher Frommann in Jena, was of awarmer nature, and has left its traces on his sonnets.

In 1808, as we have seen, appeared the first part ofFaust, andin 1809 it was followed byDie Wahlverwandtschaften. The novel,hardly less than the drama, effected a change in the publicattitude towards the poet. Since the beginning of the centurythe conviction had been gaining ground that Goethe’s missionwas accomplished, that the day of his leadership was over;but here were two works which not merely re-established hisascendancy, but proved that the old poet was in sympathy withthe movement of letters, and keenly alive to the change of ideaswhich the new century had brought in its train. The intimatepsychological study of four minds, which forms the subject oftheWahlverwandtschaften, was an essay in a new type of fiction,and pointed out the way for developments of the German novelafter the stimulus ofWilhelm Meister had exhausted itself.Less important thanDie Wahlverwandtschaften wasPandora(1810), the final product of Goethe’s classicism, and the mostuncompromisingly classical and allegorical of all his works.And in 1810, too, appeared his treatise onFarbenlehre. In thefollowing year the first volume of his autobiography waspublished under the titleAus meinem Leben, Dichtung und Wahrheit.The second and third volumes of this work followed in 1812 and1814; the fourth, bringing the story of his life up to the closeof the Frankfort period in 1833, after his death. Goethe felt,even late in life, too intimately bound up with Weimar to discussin detail his early life there, and he shrank from carrying hisbiography beyond the year 1775. But a number of otherpublications—descriptions of travel, such as theItalienischeReise (1816–1817), the materials for a continuation ofDichtungund Wahrheit collected inTag- und Jahreshefte (1830)—have alsoto be numbered among the writings which Goethe has left us asdocuments of his life. Meanwhile no less valuable biographicalmaterials were accumulating in his diaries, his voluminouscorrespondence and his conversations, as recorded by J. P.Eckermann, the chancellor Müller and F. Soret. Severalperiodical publications,Über Kunst und Altertum (1816–1832),Zur Naturwissenschaft überhaupt (1817–1824).Zur Morphologie(1817–1824), bear witness to the extraordinary breadth ofGoethe’s interests in these years. Art, science, literature—littleescaped his ken—and that not merely in Germany: Englishwriters, Byron, Scott and Carlyle, Italians like Manzoni, Frenchscientists and poets, could all depend on friendly words ofappreciation and encouragement from Weimar.

InWest-östlicher Diwan (1819), a collection of lyrics—matchlessin form and even more concentrated in expression than thoseof earlier days—which were suggested by a German translationof Hafiz, Goethe had another surprise in store for hiscontemporaries. And, again, it was an actual passion—that for Mariannevon Willemer, whom he met in 1814 and 1815—which rekindledin him the lyric fire. Meanwhile the years were thinning theranks of Weimar society: Wieland, the last of Goethe’s greaterliterary contemporaries, died in 1813, his wife in 1816, Charlottevon Stein in 1827 and Duke Charles Augustus in 1828. Goethe’sretirement from the direction of the theatre in 1817 meant forhim a break with the literary life of the day. In 1822 a passionfor a young girl, Ulrike von Levetzow, whom he met at Marienbad,inspired the fineTrilogie der Leidenschaft, and between1821 and 1829 appeared the long-expected and long-promisedcontinuation ofWilhelm Meister,Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.The latter work, however, was a disappointment: perhaps itcould not have been otherwise. Goethe had lost the thread ofhis romance and it was difficult for him to resume it. Problemsof the relation of the individual to society and industrial questionswere to have formed the theme of theWanderjahre; but sincethe French Revolution these problems had themselves enteredon a new phase and demanded a method of treatment which itwas not easy for the old poet to learn. Thus his intentions wereonly partially carried out, and the volumes were filled out byirrelevant stories, which had been written at widely differentperiods.

But the crowning achievement of Goethe’s literary life wasthe completion ofFaust. The poem had accompanied him fromearly manhood to the end and was the repository for the fullest“confession” of his life; it is the poetic epitome of his experience.The second part is, in form, far removed from the impressiverealism of theUrfaust. It is a phantasmagory; a drama theactors in which are not creatures of flesh and blood, but theshadows of an unreal world of allegory. The lover of Gretchenhad, as far as poetic continuity is concerned, disappeared withthe close of the first part. In the second part it is virtually a newFaust who, at the hands of a new Mephistopheles, goes out intoa world that is not ours. Yet behind these unconvincing shadowsof an imperial court with its financial difficulties, of the classicalWalpurgisnacht, of the fantastic creation of the Homunculus,the noble Helena episode and the impressive mystery-sceneof the close, where the centenarian Faust finally triumphs overthe powers of evil, there lies a philosophy of life, a ripe wisdomborn of experience, such as no European poet had given to theworld since the Renaissance.Faust has been well called the“divine comedy” of 18th-century humanism.

The second part ofFaust forms a worthy close to the life of Germany’s greatest man of letters, who died in Weimar on the 22nd of March 1832. He was the last of those universal minds which have been able to compass all domains of human activity and knowledge; for he stood on the brink of an era of rapidly expanding knowledge which has made for ever impossible the universality of interest and sympathy which distinguished him. As a poet, his fame has undergone many vicissitudes since his death, ranging from the indifference of the “Young German” school to the enthusiastic admiration of the closing decades of the 19th century—an enthusiasm to which we owe the WeimarGoethe-Gesellschaft (founded in 1885) and a vast literature dealing with the poet’s life and work; but the fact of his being Germany’s greatest poet and the master of her classical literature has never been seriously put in question. The intrinsic value of his poetic work, regarded apart from his personality, is smaller in proportion to its bulk than is the case with many lesser German poets and with the greatest poets of other literatures. But Goethe was a type of literary man hitherto unrepresented among the leading writers of the world’s literature; he was a poet whose supreme greatness lay in his subjectivity. Only a small fraction ​of Goethe’s work was written in an impersonal and objectivespirit, and sprang from what might be called a conscious artisticimpulse; by far the larger—and the better—part is the immediatereflex of his feelings and experiences.

It is as a lyric poet that Goethe’s supremacy is least likelyto be challenged; he has given his nation, whose highest literaryexpression has in all ages been essentially lyric, its greatest songs.No other German poet has succeeded in attuning feeling, sentimentand thought so perfectly to the music of words as he; nonehas expressed so fully that spirituality in which the quintessenceof German lyrism lies. Goethe’s dramas, on the other hand,have not, in the eyes of his nation, succeeded in holding theirown beside Schiller’s; but the reason is rather because Goethe,from what might be called a wilful obstinacy, refused to bebound by the conventions of the theatre, than because he wasdeficient in the cunning of the dramatist. For, as an interpreterof human character in the drama, Goethe is without a rivalamong modern poets, and there is not one of his plays that doesnot contain a few scenes or characters which bear indisputabletestimony to his mastery.Faust is Germany’s most nationaldrama, and it remains perhaps for the theatre of the future toprove itself capable of popularizing psychological masterpieceslikeTasso andIphigenie. It is as a novelist that Goethe hassuffered most by the lapse of time. TheSorrows of Werther nolonger moves us to tears, and evenWilhelm Meister andDieWahlverwandtschaften require more understanding for theconditions under which they were written than doFaust orEgmont. Goethe could fill his prose with rich wisdom, but hewas only the perfect artist in verse.

Little attention is nowadays paid to Goethe’s work in otherfields, work which he himself in some cases prized more highlythan his poetry. It is only as an illustration of his many-sidednessand his manifold activity that we now turn to his work as astatesman, as a theatre-director, as a practical political economist.His art-criticism is symptomatic of a phase of European tastewhich tried in vain to check the growing individualism ofRomanticism. His scientific studies and discoveries awakenonly an historical interest. We marvel at the obstinacy withwhich he, with inadequate mathematical knowledge, opposedthe Newtonian theory of light and colour; and at his championshipof “Neptunism,” the theory of aqueous origin, as opposedto “Vulcanism,” that of igneous origin of the earth’s crust.Of far-reaching importance was, on the other hand, hisforeshadowing of the Darwinian theory in his works on themetamorphosis of plants and on animal morphology. Indeed, thededuction to be drawn from Goethe’s contributions to botanyand anatomy is that he, as no other of his contemporaries,possessed that type of scientific mind which, in the 19th century,has made for progress; he was Darwin’s predecessor by virtueof his enunciation of what has now become one of the commonplacesof natural science—organic evolution. Modern, too, wasthe outlook of the aging poet on the changing social conditionsof the age, wonderfully sympathetic his attitude towards modernindustry, which steam was just beginning to establish on a newbasis, and towards modern democracy. The Europe of his lateryears was very different from the idyllic and enlightenedautocracy of the 18th century, in which he had spent his bestyears and to which he had devoted his energies; yet Goethewas at home in it.

From the philosophic movement, in which Schiller and theRomanticists were so deeply involved, Goethe stood apart.Comparatively early in life he had found in Spinoza the philosopherwho responded to his needs; Spinoza taught him to seein nature the “living garment of God,” and more he did not seekor need to know. As a convinced realist he took his standpointon nature and experience, and could afford to look on objectivelyat the controversies of the metaphysicians. Kant he by nomeans ignored, and under Schiller’s guidance he learned muchfrom him; but of the younger thinkers, only Schelling, whosemystic nature-philosophy was a development of Spinoza’sideas, touched a sympathetic chord in his nature. As a moralistand a guide to the conduct of life—an aspect of Goethe’s workwhich Carlyle, viewing him through the coloured glasses ofFichtean idealism, emphasized and interpreted not alwaysjustly—Goethe was a powerful force on German life in years ofpolitical and intellectual depression. It is difficult even stillto get beyond the maxims of practical wisdom he scattered soliberally through his writings, the lessons to be learned fromMeister andFaust, or even that calm, optimistic fatalism whichnever deserted Goethe, and was so completely justified by thetenor of his life. If the philosophy of Spinoza provided the poetwith a religion which made individual creeds and dogmasunnecessary and impossible, so Leibnitz’s doctrine ofpredestinism supplied the foundations for his faith in the divinemission of human life.

This many-sided activity is a tribute to the greatness ofGoethe’s mind and personality; we may regard him merely asthe embodiment of his particular age, or as a poet “for alltime”; but with one opinion all who have felt the power ofGoethe’s genius are in agreement—the opinion which was condensedin Napoleon’s often cited words, uttered after the meetingat Erfurt:Voilà un homme! Of all modern men, Goethe isthe most universal type of genius. It is the full, rich humanityof his life and personality—not the art behind which the artistdisappears, or the definite pronouncements of the thinker or theteacher—that constitutes his claim to a place in the front rankof men of letters. His life was his greatest work.

Goethe’s Descendants.—Goethe’s only son,August,born onthe 25th of December 1789 at Weimar, married in 1817 Ottilievon Pogwisch (1796–1872), who had come as a child to Weimarwith her mother (née Countess Henckel von Donnersmarck).The marriage was a very unhappy one, the husband having noqualities that could appeal to a woman who, whatever thecensorious might say of her moral character, was distinguishedto the last by a lively intellect and a singular charm. Augustvon Goethe, whose sole distinction was his birth and his positionas grand-ducal chamberlain, died in Italy, on the 27th of October1830, leaving three children:Walther Wolfgang, born onApril 9, 1818, died on April 15, 1885;WolfgangMaximilian,born on September 18, 1820, died on January 20, 1883;Alma,born on October 22, 1827, died on September 29, 1844.

Of Walther von Goethe little need be said. In youth he hadmusical ambitions, studied under Mendelssohn and Weinligat Leipzig, under Loewe at Stettin, and afterwards at Vienna.He published a few songs of no great merit, and had at hisdeath no more than the reputation among his friends of a kindlyand accomplished man.

Wolfgang or, as he was familiarly called, Wolf von Goethe, was by far the more gifted of the two brothers, and his gloomy destiny by so much the more tragic. A sensitive and highly imaginative boy, he was the favourite of his grandfather, who made him his constant companion. This fact, instead of being to the boy’s advantage, was to prove his bane. The exalted atmosphere of the great man’s ideas was too rarefied for the child’s intellectual health, and a brain well fitted to do excellent work in the world was ruined by the effort to live up to an impossible ideal. To maintain himself on the same height as his grandfather, and to make the name of Goethe illustrious in his descendants also, became Wolfgang’s ambition; and his incapacity to realize this, very soon borne in upon him, paralyzed ​his efforts and plunged him at last into bitter revolt against hisfate and gloomy isolation from a world that seemed to have nouse for him but as a curiosity. From the first, too, he washampered by wretched health; at the age of sixteen he wassubjected to one of those terrible attacks of neuralgia whichwere to torment him to the last; physically and mentally alikehe stood in tragic contrast with his grandfather, in whosegigantic personality the vigour of his race seems to have beenexhausted.

From 1839 to 1845 Wolfgang studied law at Bonn, Jena,Heidelberg and Berlin, taking his degree ofdoctor juris at Heidelbergin 1845. During this period he had made his first literaryefforts. HisStudenten-Briefe (Jena, 1842), a medley of lettersand lyrics, are wholly conventional. This was followed byDerMensch und die elementarische Natur (Stuttgart and Tübingen,1845), in three parts (Beiträge): (1) an historical and philosophicaldissertation on the relations of mankind and the “soul of nature,”largely influenced by Schelling, (2) a dissertation on the juridicalside of the question,De fragmento Vegoiae, being the thesispresented for his degree, (3) a lyrical drama,Erlinde. In thislast, as in his other poetic attempts, Wolfgang showed a considerablemeasure of inherited or acquired ability, in his wealth oflanguage and his easy mastery of the difficulties of rhythm andrhyme. But this was all. The work was characteristic of hisself-centred isolation: ultra-romantic at a time when Romanticismwas already an outworn fashion, remote alike from thespirit of the age and from that of Goethe. The cold receptionit met with shattered at a blow the dream of Wolfgang’s life;henceforth he realized that to the world he was interestingmainly as “Goethe’s grandson,” that anything he might achievewould be measured by that terrible standard, and he hated thelegacy of his name.

The next five years he spent in Italy and at Vienna, tormentedby facial neuralgia. Returning to Weimar in 1850, he was made achamberlain by the grand-duke, and in 1852, his health beingnow somewhat restored, he entered the Prussian diplomaticservice and went as attaché to Rome. The fruit of his longyears of illness was a slender volume of lyrics,Gedichte (Stuttgartand Tübingen, 1851), good in form, but seldom inspired, andshowing occasionally the influence of a morbid sensuality. In1854 he was appointed secretary of legation; but the aggressiveultramontanism of the Curia became increasingly intolerableto his overwrought nature, and in 1856 he was transferred, at hisown request, as secretary of legation to Dresden. This post heresigned in 1859, in which year he was raised to the rank ofFreiherr (baron). In 1866 he received the title of councillorof legation; but he never again occupied any diplomatic post.

The rest of his life he devoted to historical research, ultimatelyselecting as his special subject the Italian libraries up to the year1500. The outcome of all his labours was, however, only thefirst part ofStudies and Researches in the Times and Life ofCardinal Bessarion, embracing the period of the council ofFlorence (privately printed at Jena, 1871), a catalogue of theMSS. in the monastery of Sancta Justina at Padua (Jena,1873), and a mass of undigested material, which he ultimatelybequeathed to the university of Jena.

In 1870 Ottilie von Goethe, who had resided mainly at Vienna,returned to Weimar and took up her residence with her two sonsin the Goethehaus. So long as she lived, her small salon in theattic storey of the great house was a centre of attraction formany of the most illustrious personages in Europe. But afterher death in 1872 the two brothers lived in almost completeisolation. The few old friends, including the grand-duke CharlesAlexander, who continued regularly to visit the house, wereentertained with kindly hospitality by Baron Walther; Wolfgangrefused to be drawn from his isolation even by the adventof royalty. “Tell the empress,” he cried on one occasion,“that I am not a wild beast to be stared at!” In 1879, hisincreasing illness necessitating the constant presence of anattendant, he went to live at Leipzig, where he died.

Goethe’s grandsons have been so repeatedly accused of havingdisplayed a dog-in-the-manger temper in closing the Goethehausto the public and the Goethe archives to research, that thecharge has almost universally come to be regarded as proven.It is true that the house was closed and access to the archives onlyvery sparingly allowed until Baron Walther’s death in 1885.But the reason for this was not, as Herr Max Hecker ratherabsurdly suggests, Wolfgang’s jealousy of his grandfather’soppressive fame, but one far more simple and natural. Fromone cause or another, principally Ottilie von Goethe’s extravagance,the family was in very straitened circumstances; and thebrothers, being thoroughly unbusinesslike, believed themselvesto be poorer than they really were.^[1]They closed the Goethehausand the archives, because to have opened them would haveneeded an army of attendants.^[2] If they deserveany blame itis for the pride, natural to their rank and their generation, whichprevented them from charging an entrance fee, an expedientwhich would not only have made it possible for them to giveaccess to the house and collections, but would have enabledthem to save the fabric from falling into the lamentable stateof disrepair in which it was found after their death. In any case,the accusation is ungenerous. With an almost exaggeratedPietät Goethe’s descendants preserved his house untouched,at great inconvenience to themselves, and left it, with all itstreasures intact, to the nation. Had they been the selfishmisers they are sometimes painted, they could have realized afortune by selling its contents.