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Johann Wolfgang Goethe

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Writers and critics

   Johann Wolfgang Goethe
   Johann Wolfgang Goethe
   Born 28 August 1749
        Frankfurt, Germany
   Died 22 March 1832
        Weimar, Germany

   Johann Wolfgang Goethe , IPA: [gøːtə], later von Goethe, ( 28 August
   1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath: he was a poet, novelist,
   dramatist, humanist, scientist, theorist, painter, and for ten years
   chief minister of state for the duchy of Weimar.

   Goethe was one of the key figures of German literature and the movement
   of Weimar Classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; this
   movement coincides with Enlightenment, Sentimentality
   ("Empfindsamkeit"), Sturm und Drang, and Romanticism. The author of
   Faust and Theory of Colours, he inspired Darwin with his independent
   discovery of the human intermaxillary jaw bones and focus on
   evolutionary ideas. Goethe's influence spread across Europe, and for
   the next century his works were a primary source of inspiration in
   music, drama, poetry, and philosophy. He is widely considered to be one
   of the most important thinkers in Western culture, and is often cited
   as one of history's greatest geniuses.

Life

Early life (1749–1765)

   Goethe's birthplace in Frankfurt, Germany (Großer Hirschgraben)
   Enlarge
   Goethe's birthplace in Frankfurt, Germany (Großer Hirschgraben)

   Goethe's father, Johann Caspar Goethe (1710–1782), lived with his
   family in a large house in Frankfurt am Main, then part of the Holy
   Roman Empire. Goethe's mother, Catharina Elisabeth Textor (1731–1808),
   the daughter of the Mayor of Frankfurt, married 38-year-old Johann
   Caspar when she was only 17. All their children, except for Goethe and
   his sister, Cornelia Friderike Christiana, who was born in 1750, died
   at an early age.

   Johann Caspar and private teachers gave Goethe lessons in all common
   subjects, especially languages (Latin, Greek, French, English and
   Hebrew). Goethe also took lessons in dancing, riding and fencing. He
   had a persistent dislike of the church, and characterized its history
   as a "hotchpotch of mistakes and violence" {Mischmasch von Irrtum und
   Gewalt). His great passion was drawing. Goethe quickly became
   interested in literature; Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Homer were
   among his early favourites. He had a lively devotion to theatre as
   well, and was greatly fascinated by puppet shows that were annually
   arranged in his home –- a familiar theme in Wilhelm Meister.

Leipzig (1765-1768)

   Goethe studied law in Leipzig from 1765 to 1768. Learning age-old
   judicial rules by heart was something he strongly detested. He
   preferred to attend the poetry lessons of Christian Fürchtegott
   Gellert. In Leipzig, Goethe fell in love with Käthchen Schönkopf and
   wrote cheerful verses about her in the Rococo genre. In 1770, he
   anonymously released Annette, his first collection of poems. His
   uncritical admiration for many contemporary poets vanished as he became
   interested in Lessing and Wieland. Already at this time, Goethe wrote
   very much – he threw away nearly all of these works, except for the
   comedy Die Mitschuldigen. The restaurant Auerbachs Keller and its
   legend of Faust’s 1525 barrel ride impressed him so much that Auerbachs
   Keller became the only real place in his drama Faust Part One. Because
   his study did not advance, Goethe was forced to return to Frankfurt at
   the end of August 1768.

Frankfurt/Strasbourg (1768-1770)

   In Frankfurt, Goethe became severely ill. During the year and a half
   which followed, because of several relapses, the relationship with his
   father worsened. During convalescence, Goethe was nursed by his mother
   and sister. Bored in bed, he wrote an impudent crime comedy. In April
   1770, his father lost his patience; Goethe left Frankfurt in order to
   finish his studies in Strasbourg.

   In Alsace, Goethe blossomed. No other landscape has he described as
   affectionately as the warm, wide Rhine area. In Strasbourg, Goethe met
   Johann Gottfried Herder, who happened to be in town on the occasion of
   an eye operation. The two became close friends, and crucially to
   Goethe's intellectual development, it was Herder who kindled his
   interest in Shakespeare, Ossian, and in the notion of Volkspoesie (folk
   poetry). On a trip to the village Sesenheim, Goethe fell in love with
   Friederike Brion. But after a couple of weeks, he ended the
   relationship. Several of his poems, like Willkommen und Abschied,
   Sesenheimer Lieder and Heideröslein, originate from this time.

   Despite being based on own ideas, his legal thesis was published
   uncensored. Shortly after, he was offered a career in the French
   government. Goethe rejected – he did not want to commit himself, but to
   remain an "original genius".

Frankfurt and Darmstadt (1771)

   At the end of August 1771, Goethe was certified as licensee in
   Frankfurt. He wanted to make the jurisdiction progressively more
   humane. In his first cases, he proceeded too vigorously, was
   reprimanded and lost the passion. This prematurely terminated his
   career as a lawyer after only a few months. At this time, Goethe was
   acquainted with the court of Darmstadt, where his inventiveness was
   praised. From this milieu came Johann Georg Schlosser (who was later to
   become his brother-in-law) and Johann Heinrich Merck. Goethe also
   pursued literary plans again; this time, his father did not have
   anything against it, and even helped. Goethe got hands on the biography
   of a noble highwayman from the Peasants' War. In a couple of weeks, the
   biography was converted into a colourful picture book. The work, called
   "Götz von Berlichingen", went straight to the heart of his
   contemporaries.

Professional and later life (1772-1832)

   Goethe. Painting by Josef Stieler, 1828.
   Enlarge
   Goethe. Painting by Josef Stieler, 1828.

   Goethe could not subsist on being one of the editors of a literary
   periodical (published by Schlosser and Merck). In May 1772, he once
   more began the practice of law at Wetzlar. At the invitation of Carl
   August, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, he went, in 1775, to live
   in Weimar where he held a succession of political offices, even
   becoming the Duke's chief adviser.

Study of the Qur'an

   His first Qur'an studies of 1771/1772 and the later ones are in the
   Goethe and Schiller-Archive in Weimar. Goethe read the German
   translation of Qur'an by J. v. Hammer (possibly as well the more
   prosaic English translation of G. Sale) aloud in front of members of
   the Duke's family in Weimar and their guests. Being witnesses, Schiller
   and his wife reported about the reading. Goethe always felt that the
   contemporaneous (Latin, English, German and French) translations had
   shortcomings and was constantly looking for new translations.

   Goethe bought original Persian manuscripts of Rumi, Jami, Hafiz, Saadi,
   Attar, Tafsir al-Tabari, Dua, an Arabic-Turkish dictionary, and texts
   on matters like the freeing of slaves, buying and selling, interest,
   usury and Arabian scripts from Sultan Selim. Goethe's positive attitude
   towards Islam goes far beyond anyone in Germany before. On 24 February
   1816, he wrote, "The poet [Goethe]... does not refuse the suspicion
   that he himself is a Muslim." Goethe was mostly attracted by the
   religious and philosophical meaning of Islam -- the unity of God and
   the conviction that God manifests in nature and creation are some of
   the major themes in Goethe's work. In 1771/1772, Goethe copied and
   partly corrected the text of the first direct translation of the Qur'an
   from Arabic into German.

Later life

   He was ennobled in 1782. His journey to the Italian peninsula from 1786
   to 1788 was of great signicance for his later aesthetical and
   philosophical development, as was his admission in 1782 that he was "a
   decided non- Christian". His diaries of this period form the basis of
   the non-fiction Italian Journey. In the autumn of 1792, Goethe took
   part in the battle of Valmy against revolutionary France, assisting
   Duke Carl August of Saxe-Weimar during the failed invasion of France.
   In 1794 Friedrich Schiller wrote to Goethe offering friendship, which
   lasted until the former's death in 1805; they had previously had a wary
   acquaintance since 1788. In 1806, he married Christiane Vulpius. By
   1820, he was on friendly terms with Kaspar Maria von Sternberg. From
   1794, he devoted himself chiefly to literature and after a life of
   immense productivity, died while in Weimar, in 1832.

Works

   The most important of Goethe's works produced before he went to Weimar
   were his tragedy Götz von Berlichingen (1773), which was the first work
   to bring him fame, and the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774),
   which gained him enormous popularity as a writer in the Sturm und Drang
   movement. During the years at Weimar before he met Schiller he began
   Wilhelm Meister, wrote the dramas Iphigenie auf Tauris (Iphigenia in
   Tauris), Egmont, Torquato Tasso, and Reineke Fuchs.

   To the period of his friendship with Schiller belong the continuation
   of Wilhelm Meister, the idyll of Hermann and Dorothea, and the Roman
   Elegies. In the last period, between Schiller's death, in 1805, and his
   own, appeared Faust, Elective Affinities, his pseudo-autobiographical
   Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit (From my Life: Poetry and
   Truth), his Italian Journey, much scientific work, and a series of
   treatises on German art. His writings were immediately influential in
   literary and artistic circles.

   In addition to his literary work, Goethe also contributed significant
   work to the sciences. In biology, his theory of plant metamorphosis
   stipulated that all plant formation stems from a modification of the
   leaf; during his Italian journey (1786-1788), in July of 1787, he
   writes as the first indication of this idea:

     Furthermore I must confess to you that I have nearly discovered the
     secret of plant generation and structure, and that it is the
     simplest thing imaginable.... Namely it had become apparent to me
     that in the plant organ which we ordinarily call the leaf a true
     Proteaus is concealed, who can hide and reveal himself in all sorts
     of configurations. From top to bottom a plant is all leaf, united so
     inseparably with the future bud that one cannot be imagined without
     the other.

     —Suhrkamp ed., vol 6; trans. Robert R Heitner, Italian Journey

   He is credited with the discovery of the intermaxillary bone in humans,
   during 1784; however, Broussonet (1779) and Vicq d'Azyr (1780) had
   identified the same structure several years earlier.

   Although it was never well received by scientists due to its apparent
   conflict with Newton's theory of light, against which Goethe
   fulminated, Goethe considered his Theory of Colours to be his most
   important work. Although much of his position within this field is
   often blurred by misconceptions among both his detractors and
   eulogizers, based upon his experiments with prismatic colors Goethe
   characterized colour as arising from the dynamic interplay of darkness
   and light, and standing between their polar qualities:

     ...they maintained that shade is a part of light. It sounds absurd
     when I express it; but so it is: for they said that colours, which
     are shadow and the result of shade, are light itself, or, which
     amounts to the same thing, are the beams of light, broken now in one
     way, now in another.

   He also regarded light's physical nature, physiological effects
   (including the afterimages induced in the eye), and psychological
   effects as interrelated phenomena. In the twentieth century, Goethe's
   Theory of Colours influenced the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's
   Remarks on Colour, Werner Heisenberg and Max Planck have indicated the
   accuracy and suggestiveness of many of Goethe's scientific statements,
   and it has had a tremendous impact in other fields.

Key works

   Statues of Goethe and Schiller, Weimar.
   Enlarge
   Statues of Goethe and Schiller, Weimar.

   The following list of key works may give a sense of the scope of the
   impact his work had on his and modern times.

   The short epistolary novel, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, or The
   Sorrows of Young Werther, published in 1774, recounts an unhappy love
   affair that ends in suicide. Goethe admitted that he "shot his hero to
   save himself". The novel remains in print in dozens of languages and is
   frequently referred to in the context of a young hero, who becomes
   disillusioned with society and by his irreconcilable love for a young
   woman. The fact that it ended with the protagonist's suicide and
   funeral—a funeral which "no clergyman attended"—made the book deeply
   controversial upon its (anonymous) publication, for it seemed to
   condone suicide. One would have expected a clergyman to attend the
   funeral service and condemn an act considered to be sinful by Christian
   doctrine. Epistolary novels were common during this time,
   letter-writing being people's primary mode of communication. What set
   Goethe's book apart from other such novels was its expression of
   unbridled longing for a joy beyond possibility, its sense of defiant
   rebellion against authority, and, above all, its total
   subjectivity—qualities that pointed the way toward the Romantic
   movement.

   The next work, his epic closet drama Faust, was to be completed in
   stages, and only published in its entirety after his death. The first
   part was published in 1808 and created a sensation. The first operatic
   version, by Spohr, appeared in 1814, and was subsequently the
   inspiration for operas by Gounod, Boito, and Busoni, as well as
   symphonies by Liszt, Wagner, and Mahler. Faust became the ur-myth of
   many figures in the 19th century. Later, a facet of its plot, i.e., of
   selling one's soul to the devil for power over the physical world, took
   on increasing literary importance and became a view of the victory of
   technology and of industrialism, along with its dubious human expenses.
   On occasion, the play is still staged in Germany and other parts around
   the world.

   Goethe's poetic work served as a model for an entire movement in German
   poetry termed Innerlichkeit ("introversion") and represented by, for
   example, Heine. Goethe's words inspired a number of compositions by,
   among others, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Berlioz, and Wolf. Perhaps
   the single most influential piece is "Mignon's Song" which opens with
   one of the most famous lines in German poetry, an allusion to Italy:
   "Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn?" ("Do you know the land
   where the lemons bloom?").
   Goethe in the Roman Campagna (1786) by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm
   Tischbein. Oil on canvas, 164 x 206 cm. Städelsches Kunstinstitut,
   Frankfurt.
   Enlarge
   Goethe in the Roman Campagna (1786) by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm
   Tischbein. Oil on canvas, 164 x 206 cm. Städelsches Kunstinstitut,
   Frankfurt.

   He is also widely quoted. Epigrams such as "Against criticism a man can
   neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and
   then it will gradually yield to him", "Divide and rule, a sound motto;
   unite and lead, a better one", and "Enjoy when you can, and endure when
   you must", are still in usage or are paraphrased. Lines from Faust,
   such as "Das also war des Pudels Kern", "Das ist der Weisheit letzter
   Schluss", or "Grau ist alle Theorie" have entered everyday German
   usage. Although a doubtful success of Goethe in this field, the famous
   line from the drama Götz von Berlichingen ("Er kann mich im Arsche
   lecken": "He can lick my arse") has become a vulgar idiom in many
   languages, and shows Goethe's deep cultural impact extending across
   social, national, and linguistic borders. It may be taken as another
   measure of Goethe's fame that other well-known quotations, such as
   Hippocrates' "Art is long, life is short", which is also found in his
   Wilhelm Meister, is usually forgotten to be originally associated with
   Hippocrates.

Eroticism

   Many of Goethe's works depict homoerotic and generally erotic
   occurrences, such as in Wilhelm Meister, Faust, Götz von Berlichingen,
   the Roman Elegies, and the Venetian Epigrams, though these have often
   been explained away or ignored. This is partly due to how some in the
   past and to this day view sexuality and its nuances. For example, in
   1999, Karl Hugo Pruys' book The Tiger's Tender Touch: The Erotic Life
   of Goethe caused national controversy in Germany when it formalized the
   possibility of Goethe's homosexuality, tentatively deduced from
   Goethe's writings, for mainstream debate. In actuality, however, the
   perennial sexual portraitures and allusions in his work may in fact
   stem from one of the many effects of his profoundly eye-opening sojourn
   in Italy, where men, who shunned the prevalence of women's venereal
   diseases and unconscionable conditions, embraced homosexuality as a
   solution that was not widely imitated outside of Italy. Whatever the
   case, Goethe clearly saw sexuality, in general, as a topic that merited
   poetical and artistic depiction which went against the thought of his
   time, when the very private nature of sexuality was rigorously
   enforced, and makes him appear much more modern and—in the terms of
   Weimar Classicism— Greek than he is typically thought to be.

Historical importance

   It is very difficult to overstate the importance of Goethe on the 19th
   century. In many respects, he was the originator of—or at least the
   first to cogently express—many ideas which would later become familiar.
   Goethe produced volumes of poetry, essays, criticism, and scientific
   work, including a theory of optics and early work on evolution and
   linguistics. He was fascinated by minerals and early mineralogy (the
   mineral goethite is named for him). His non-fiction writings, most of
   which are philosophic and aphoristic in nature, spurred on the
   development of many philosophers, such as G.W.F. Hegel, Arthur
   Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernst Cassirer, Rudolf Steiner, and
   others, and of various literary movements, such as romanticism. He
   embodied many of the contending strands in art over the next century:
   his work could be lushly emotional, and rigorously formal, brief and
   epigrammatic, and epic. He would argue that classicism was the means to
   controlling art, and that romanticism was a sickness, even as he penned
   poetry rich in memorable images, and rewrote the formal rules of German
   poetry.

   His poetry was set to music by almost every major Austrian and German
   composer from Mozart to Mahler, and his influence would spread to
   French drama and opera as well. Beethoven declared that a "Faust"
   Symphony would be the greatest thing for Art. Liszt and Mahler both
   created symphonies in whole or in large part inspired by this seminal
   work which would give the 19th century one of its most paradigmatic
   figures: Doctor Faustus. The Faust tragedy/drama, often called "Das
   Drama der Deutschen" (the drama of Germans), written in two parts
   published decades apart, would stand as his most characteristic and
   famous artistic creation.

   Goethe was also a cultural force, and by researching folk traditions,
   he created many of the norms for celebrating Christmas, and argued that
   the organic nature of the land moulded the people and their customs—an
   argument that has recurred ever since, including recently in the work
   of Jared Diamond. He argued that laws could not be created by pure
   rationalism, since geography and history shaped habits and patterns.
   This stood in sharp contrast to the prevailing Enlightenment view that
   reason was sufficient to create well-ordered societies and good laws.

Influence

   Goethe's influence was dramatic because he understood that there was a
   transition in European sensibilities, an increasing focus on sense, the
   indescribable, and the emotional. This is not to say that he was
   emotionalistic or excessive; on the contrary, he lauded personal
   restraint and felt that excess was a disease: "There is nothing worse
   than imagination without taste". He argued in his scientific works that
   a "formative impulse", which he said is operative in every organism,
   causes an organism to form itself according to its own distinct laws,
   and therefore rational laws or fiats could not be imposed at all from a
   higher, transcendent sphere; this placed him in direct opposition to
   those who attempted to form "enlightened" monarchies based on
   "rational" laws by, for example, Joseph II of Austria or, the
   subsequent Emperor of the French, Napoleon I. A quotation from his
   Scientific Studies will suffice:

     We conceive of the individual animal as a small world, existing for
     its own sake, by its own means. Every creature is its own reason to
     be. All its parts have a direct effect on one another, a
     relationship to one another, thereby constantly renewing the circle
     of life; thus we are justified in considering every animal
     physiologically perfect. Viewed from within, no part of the animal
     is a useless or arbitrary product of the formative impulse (as so
     often thought). Externally, some parts may seem useless because the
     inner coherence of the animal nature has given them this form
     without regard to outer circumstance. Thus...[not] the question,
     What are they for? but rather, Where do they come from?

     —Suhrkamp ed., vol 12, p. 121; trans. Douglas Miller, Scientific
     Studies

   This change would later become the basis for 19th century
   thought—organic rather than geometrical, evolving rather than created,
   and based on sensibility and intuition, rather than on imposed order,
   culminating in, as he said, a "living quality" wherein the subject and
   object are dissolved together in a poise of inquiry. Consequently, he
   embraced neither teleological nor deterministic views of growth within
   every organism. Instead, the world as a whole grows through continual,
   external, and internal strife. Moreover, he did not embrace the
   mechanistic views that contemporaneous science subsumed during his
   time, and therewith he denied rationality's superiority as the sole
   interpretation of reality. Furthermore, he declared that all knowledge
   is related to humanity through its functional value alone and that
   knowledge presupposes a perspectival quality. He also stated that the
   fundamental nature of the world is aesthetic.

   His views make him, along with Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, and Ludwig
   van Beethoven, a figure in two worlds: on one hand, devoted to the
   sense of taste, order, and finely crafted detail, which is the hallmark
   of the artistic sense of the Age of Reason and the neo-classicistic
   period of architecture; on the other, seeking a personal, intuitive,
   and personalized form of expression and polity, firmly supporting the
   idea of self-regulating and organic systems. Thinkers such as Ralph
   Waldo Emerson would take up many similar ideas in the 1800s. His ideas
   on evolution would frame the question which Darwin and Wallace would
   approach within the scientific paradigm.
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