[1] This name seems to have survived in Whelp Moor, near Brandon, in
Suffolk.
GOEBEN, AUGUST KARL VON (1816-1880), Prussian general of infantry, came
of old Hanoverian stock. Born at Stade on the 10th of December 1816, he
aspired from his earliest years to the Prussian service rather than that
of his own country, and at the age of seventeen obtained a commission in
the 24th regiment of Prussian infantry. But there was little scope there
for the activities of a young and energetic subaltern, and, leaving the
service in 1836, he entered the Carlist army campaigning in Spain. In
the five campaigns which he made in the service of Don Carlos he had
many and various vicissitudes of fortune. He had not fought for two
months when he fell, severely wounded, into the hands of the Spanish
Royal troops. After eight months' detention he escaped, but it was not
long before he was captured again. This time his imprisonment was long
and painful, and on two occasions he was compelled to draw lots for his
life with his fellow-captives. When released, he served till 1840 with
distinction. In that year he made his way back, a beggar without means
or clothing, to Prussia. The Carlist lieutenant-colonel was glad to be
re-admitted into the Prussian service as a second lieutenant, but he was
still young, and few subalterns could at the age of twenty-four claim
five years' meritorious war service. In a few years we find him serving
as captain on the Great General Staff, and in 1848 he had the good
fortune to be transferred to the staff of the IV. army corps, his
immediate superior being Major von Moltke. The two "coming men" became
fast friends, and their mutual esteem was never disturbed. In the Baden
insurrection Goeben served with distinction on the staff of Prince
William, the future emperor. Staff and regimental duty (as usual in the
Prussian service) alternated for some years after this, till in 1863 he
became major-general commanding the 26th infantry brigade. In 1860, it
should be mentioned, he was present with the Spanish troops in Morocco,
and took part in the battle of Tetuan.
In the first of Prussia's great wars (1864) he distinguished himself at
the head of his brigade at Rackebull and Sonderburg. In the war of 1866
Lieutenant-General von Goeben commanded the 13th division, of which his
old brigade formed part, and, in this higher sphere, once more displayed
the qualities of a born leader and skilful tactician. He held almost
independent command with conspicuous success in the actions of Dermbach,
Laufach, Kissingen, Aschaffenburg, Gerchsheim, Tauber-Bischofsheim and
Wurzburg. The mobilization of 1870 placed him at the head of the VIII.
(Rhineland) army corps, forming part of the First Army under Steinmetz.
It was his resolute and energetic leading that contributed mainly to the
victory of Spicheren (6th August), and won the only laurels gained on
the Prussian right wing at Gravelotte (18th August). Under Manteuffel
the VIII. corps took part in the operations about Amiens and Bapaume,
and on the 8th of January 1871 Goeben succeeded that general in the
command of the First Army, with which he had served throughout the
campaign as a corps commander. A fortnight later he had brought the war
in northern France to a brilliant conclusion, by the decisive victory of
St Quentin (18th and 19th January 1871). The close of the Franco-German
War left Goeben one of the most distinguished men in the victorious
army. He was colonel of the 28th infantry, and had the grand cross of
the Iron Cross. He commanded the VIII. corps at Coblenz until his death
in 1880.
General von Goeben left many writings. His memoirs are to be found in
his works _Vier Jahre in Spanien_ (Hanover, 1841), _Reise- und
Lagerbriefe aus Spanien und vom spanischen Heere in Marokko_ (Hanover,
1863) and in the Darmstadt _Allgemeine Militarzeitung_. The former
French port (Queuleu) at Metz was renamed Goeben after him, and the 28th
infantry bears his name. A statue of Goeben by Schaper was erected at
Coblenz in 1884.
See G. Zernin, _Das Leben des Generals August von Goeben_ (2 vols.,
Berlin, 1895-1897); H. Barth, _A. von Goeben_ (Berlin, 1906); and, for
his share in the war of 1870-71; H. Kunz, _Der Feldzug im N. und N.W.
Frankreichs 1870-1871_ (Berlin, 1889), and the 14th Monograph of the
Great General Staff (1891).
GOEJE, MICHAEL JAN DE (1836-1909), Dutch orientalist, was born in
Friesland in 1836. He devoted himself at an early age to the study of
oriental languages and became especially proficient in Arabic, under the
guidance of Dozy and Juynboll, to whom he was afterwards an intimate
friend and colleague. He took his degree of doctor at Leiden in 1860,
and then studied for a year in Oxford, where he examined and collated
the Bodleian MSS. of Idrisi (part being published in 1866, in
collaboration with R. P. Dozy, as _Description de l'Afrique et de
l'Espagne_). About the same time he wrote _Memoires de l'histoire et de
la geographie orientales_, and edited _Expugnatio regionum_. In 1883, on
the death of Dozy, he became Arabic professor at Leiden, retiring in
1906. He died on the 17th of May 1909. Though perhaps not a teacher of
the first order, he wielded a great influence during his long
professoriate not only over his pupils, but over theologians and eastern
administrators who attended his lectures, and his many editions of
Arabic texts have been of the highest value to scholars, the most
important being his great edition of Tabari. Though entirely averse from
politics, he took a keen interest in the municipal affairs of Leiden and
made a special study of elementary education. He took the leading part
in the International Congress of Orientalists at Algiers in 1905. He was
a member of the Institut de France, was awarded the German Order of
Merit, and received an honorary doctorate of Cambridge University. At
his death he was president of the newly formed International Association
of Academies of Science. Among his chief works are _Fragmenta
historicorum Arabicorum_ (1869-1871); _Diwan of Moslim ibn al-Walid_
(1875); _Bibliotheca geographorum Arabicorum_ (1870-1894); _Annals of
Tabari_ (1879-1901); edition of Ibn Qutaiba's biographies (1904); of the
travels of Ibn Jubaye (1907, 5th vol. of Gibb Memorial). He was also the
chief editor of the _Encyclopaedia of Islam_ (vols. i.-iii.), and
contributed many articles to periodicals. He wrote for the 9th and the
present edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.
GOES, DAMIAO DE (1502-1574), Portuguese humanist, was born of a
patrician family at Alemquer, in February 1502. Under King John III. he
was employed abroad for many years from 1523 on diplomatic and
commercial missions, and he travelled over the greater part of Europe.
He was intimate with the leading scholars of the time, was acquainted
with Luther and other Protestant divines, and in 1532 became the pupil
and friend of Erasmus. Goes took his degree at Padua in 1538 after a
four years' course. In 1537, at the instance of his friend Cardinal
Sadoleto, he undertook to mediate between the Church and the Lutherans,
but failed through the attitude of the Protestants. He married in
Flanders a rich and noble Dutch lady, D. Joanna de Hargen, and settled
at Louvain, then the literary centre of the Low Countries, where he was
living in 1542 when the French besieged the town. He was given the
command of the defending forces, and saved Louvain, but was taken
prisoner and confined for nine months in France, till he obtained his
freedom by a heavy ransom. He was rewarded, however, by a grant of arms
from Charles V. He finally returned to Portugal in 1545, with a view of
becoming tutor to the king's son, but he failed to obtain this post,
owing to the denunciations of Father Simon Rodriguez, provincial of the
Jesuits, who accused Goes of favouring the Lutheran doctrines and of
being a disciple of Erasmus. Nevertheless in 1548 he was appointed chief
keeper of the archives and royal chronicler, and at once introduced some
much-needed reforms into the administration of his office.
In 1558 he was given a commission to write a history of the reign of
King Manoel, a task previously confided to Joao de Barros, but
relinquished by him. It was an onerous undertaking for a conscientious
historian, since it was necessary to expose the miseries as well as
relate the glories of the period, and so to offend some of the most
powerful families. Goes had already written a _Chronicle_ of Prince John
(afterwards John II.), and when, after more than eight years' labour, he
produced the First Part of his _Chronicle_ of King Manoel (1566), a
chorus of attacks greeted it, the edition was destroyed, and he was
compelled to issue a revised version. He brought out the three other
parts in 1566-1567, though chapters 23 to 27 of the Third Part were so
mutilated by the censorship that the printed text differs largely from
the MS. Hitherto Goes, notwithstanding his Liberalism, had escaped the
Inquisition, though in 1540 his _Fides, religio, moresque Aethiopum_ had
been prohibited by the chief inquisitor, Cardinal D. Henrique; but the
denunciation of Father Rodriguez in 1545, which had been vainly renewed
in 1550, was now brought into action, and in 1571 he was arrested to
stand his trial. There seems to be no doubt that the Inquisition made
itself on this occasion, as on others, the instrument of private enmity;
for eighteen months Goes lay ill in prison, and then he was condemned,
though he had lived for thirty years as a faithful Catholic, and the
worst that could be proved against him was that in his youth he had
spoken against Indulgences, disbelieved in auricular confession, and
consorted with heretics. He was sentenced to a term of reclusion, and
his property was confiscated to the crown. After he had abjured his
errors in private, he was sent at the end of 1572 to do penance at the
monastery of Batalha. Later he was allowed to return home to Alemquer,
where he died on the 30th of January 1574. He was buried in the church
of Nossa Senhora da Varzea.
Damiao de Goes was a man of wide culture and genial and courtly manners,
a skilled musician and a good linguist. He wrote both Portuguese and
Latin with classic strength and simplicity, and his style is free from
affectation and rhetorical ornaments. His portrait by Albrecht Durer
shows an open, intelligent face, and the record of his life proves him
to have been upright and fearless. His prosperity doubtless excited
ill-will, but above all, his ideas, advanced for Portugal, his foreign
ways, outspokenness and honesty contributed to the tragedy of his end,
at a time when the forces of ignorant reaction held the ascendant. He
had, it may be presumed, given some umbrage to the court by condemning,
in the _Chronicle of King Manoel_, the royal ingratitude to
distinguished public servants, though he received a pension and other
rewards for that work, and he had certainly offended the nobility by his
administration of the archive office and by exposing false genealogical
claims in his _Nobiliario_. He paid the penalty for telling the truth,
as he knew it, in an age when an historian had to choose between
flattery of the great and silence. The _Chronicle of King Manoel_ was
the first official history of a Portuguese reign to be written in a
critical spirit, and Damiao de Goes has the honour of having been the
first Portuguese royal chronicler to deserve the name of an historian.
His Portuguese works include _Chronica do felicissimo rei Dom Emanuel_
(parts i. and ii., Lisbon, 1566, parts iii. and iv., ib. 1567). Other
editions appeared in Lisbon in 1619 and 1749 and in Coimbra in 1790.
_Chronica do principe Dom Joam_ (Lisbon, 1558), with subsequent
editions in 1567 and 1724 in Lisbon and in 1790 in Coimbra. _Livro de
Marco Tullio Ciceram chamado Catam Mayor_ (Venice, 1538). This is a
translation of Cicero's _De senectute_. His Latin works, published
separately, comprise: (1) _Legatio magni imperatoris Presbiteri
Joannis, &c._ (Antwerp, 1532); (2) _Legatio Davidis Ethiopiae regis,
&c._ (Bologna, 1533); (3) _Commentarii rerum gestarum in India_
(Louvain, 1539); (4) _Fides, religio, moresque Aethiopum_ (Louvain,
1540), incorporating Nos. (1) and (2); (5) _Hispania_ (Louvain, 1542);
(6) _Aliquot epistolae Sadoleti Bembi et aliorum clarissimorum
virorum, &c._ (Louvain, 1544); (7) _Damiani a Goes equitis Lusitani
aliquot opuscula_ (Louvain, 1544); (8) _Urbis Lovaniensis obsidia_
(Lisbon, 1546); (9) _De bello Cambaico ultimo_ (Louvain, 1549); (10)
_Urbis Olisiponensis descriptio_ (Evora, 1554); (11) _Epistola ad
Hieronymum Cardosum_ (Lisbon, 1556). Most of the above went through
several editions, and many were afterwards included with new works in
such collections as No. (7), and seven sets of _Opuscula_ appeared,
all incomplete. Nos. (3), (4) and (5) suffered mutilation in
subsequent editions, at the hands of the censors, because they
offended against religious orthodoxy or family pride.
AUTHORITIES.--(A) Joaquim de Vasconcellos, _Goesiana_ (5 vols.), with
the following sub-titles: (1) _O Retrato de Albrecht Durer_ (Porto,
1879); (2) _Bibliographia_ (Porto, 1879), which describes 67 numbers
of books by Goes; (3) As Variantes das Chronicus Portuguezas (Porto,
1881); (4) _Damiao de Goes: Novos Estudos_ (Porto, 1897); (5) _As
Cartas Latinas_--in the press (1906). Snr. Vasconcellos only printed a
very limited number of copies of these studies for distribution among
friends, so that they are rare. (B) Guilherme J. C. Henriques,
_Ineditos Goesianos_, vol. i. (Lisbon, 1896), vol. ii. (containing the
proceedings at the trial by the Inquisition) (Lisbon, 1898). (C) A. P.
Lopes de Mendonca, _Damiao de Goes e a Inquisicao de Portugal_
(Lisbon, 1859). (D) Dr Sousa Viterbo, _Damiao de Goes e D. Antonio
Pinheiro_ (Coimbra, 1895). (E) Dr Theophilo Braga, _Historia da
Universidade de Coimbra_ (Lisbon, 1892), i. 374-380. (F) Menendez y
Pelayo, _Historia de los Heter. Espanoles_, ii. 129-143. (E. Pr.)
GOES, HUGO VAN DER (d. 1482), a painter of considerable celebrity at
Ghent, was known to Vasari, as he is known to us, by a single picture in
a Florentine monastery. At a period when the family of the Medici had
not yet risen from the rank of a great mercantile firm to that of a
reigning dynasty, it employed as an agent at the port of Bruges Tommaso
Portinari, a lineal descendant, it was said, of Folco, the father of
Dante's Beatrix. Tommaso, at that time patron of a chapel in the
hospital of Santa Maria Nuova at Florence, ordered an altar-piece of
Hugo van der Goes, and commanded him to illustrate the sacred theme of
"Quem genuit adoravit." In the centre of a vast triptych, comprising
numerous figures of life size, Hugo represented the Virgin kneeling in
adoration before the new-born Christ attended by Shepherds and Angels.
On the wings he portrayed Tommaso and his two sons in prayer under the
protection of Saint Anthony and St Matthew, and Tommaso's wife and two
daughters supported by St Margaret and St Mary Magdalen. The triptych,
which has suffered much from decay and restoring, was for over 400 years
at Santa Maria Nuova, and is now in the Uffizi Gallery. Imposing because
composed of figures of unusual size, the altar-piece is more remarkable
for portrait character than for charms of ideal beauty.
There are also small pieces in public galleries which claim to have been
executed by Van der Goes. One of these pictures in the National Gallery
in London is more nearly allied to the school of Memling than to the
triptych of Santa Maria Nuova; another, a small and very beautiful "John
the Baptist," at the Pinakothek of Munich, is really by Memling; whilst
numerous fragments of an altar-piece in the Belvedere at Vienna, though
assigned to Hugo, are by his more gifted countryman of Bruges. Van der
Goes, however, was not habitually a painter of easel pieces. He made his
reputation at Bruges by producing coloured hangings in distemper. After
he settled at Ghent, and became a master of his gild in 1465, he
designed cartoons for glass windows. He also made decorations for the
wedding of Charles the Bold and Margaret of York in 1468, for the
festivals of the Rhetoricians and papal jubilees on repeated occasions,
for the solemn entry of Charles the Bold into Ghent in 1470-1471, and
for the funeral of Philip the Good in 1474. The labour which he expended
on these occasions might well add to his fame without being the less
ephemeral. About the year 1475 he retired to the monastery of Rouge
Cloitre near Ghent, where he took the cowl. There, though he still clung
to his profession, he seems to have taken to drinking, and at one time
to have shown decided symptoms of insanity. But his superiors gradually
cured him of his intemperance, and he died in the odour of sanctity in
1482.
GOES, a town in the province of Zeeland, Holland, on the island of South
Beveland, 11-1/2 m. by rail E. of Middelburg. Pop. (1900) 6919. It is
connected by a short canal with the East Scheldt, and has a good harbour
(1819) defended by a fort. The principal buildings are the interesting
Gothic church (1423) and the picturesque old town hall (restored 1771).
There are various educational and charitable institutions. Goes has
preserved for centuries its prosperous position as the market-town of
the island. The chief industries are boat-building, brewing,
book-binding and cigar-making. The town had its origin in the castle of
Oostende, built here by the noble family of Borssele. It received a
charter early in the 15th century from the countess Jacoba of Holland,
who frequently stayed at the castle.
GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON (1749-1832), German poet, dramatist and
philosopher, was born at Frankfort-on-Main on the 28th of August 1749.
He came, on his father's side, of Thuringian stock, his
great-grandfather, Hans Christian Goethe, having been a farrier at
Artern-on-the-Unstrut, about the middle of the 17th century. Hans
Christian's son, Friedrich Georg, was brought up to the trade of a
tailor, and in this capacity 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-do innkeeper. His
son, Johann Kaspar, the poet's father (1710-1782), studied law at
Leipzig, and, after going through the prescribed courses of practical
training at Wetzlar, travelled in Italy. He hoped, on his return to
Frankfort, to obtain an official position in the government of the free
city, but his personal influence with the authorities was not
sufficiently strong. In his disappointment he resolved never again to
offer his services to his native town, and retired into private life, a
course which his ample means facilitated. In 1742 he acquired, as a
consolation for the public career he had missed, the title of
_kaiserlicher Rat_, and in 1748 married Katharina Elisabeth (1731-1808),
daughter of the _Schultheiss_ or _Burgermeister_ of Frankfort, Johann
Wolfgang Textor. The poet was the eldest son of this union. Of the later
children only one, Cornelia, born in 1750, survived the years of
childhood; she died as the wife of Goethe's friend, J. G. Schlosser, in
1777. The best elements in Goethe's genius came from his mother's side;
of a lively, impulsive disposition, and gifted with remarkable
imaginative power, Frau Rat was the ideal mother of a poet; moreover,
being hardly eighteen at the time of her son's birth, she was herself
able to be the companion of his childhood. From his father, whose stern,
somewhat pedantic nature repelled warmer feelings on the part of the
children, Goethe Inherited that "holy earnestness" and stability of
character which brought him unscathed through temptations and passions,
and held the balance to his all too powerful imagination.
Unforgettable is the picture which the poet subsequently drew of his
childhood spent in the large house with its many nooks and crannies, in
the Grosse Hirschgraben at Frankfort. Books, pictures, objects of art,
antiquities, reminiscences of Rat Goethe's visit to Italy, above all a
marionette theatre, kindled the child's quick intellect and imagination.
His training was conducted in its early stages by his father, and was
later supplemented by tutors. Meanwhile the varied and picturesque life
of Frankfort was in itself an education. In 1759, during the Seven
Years' War, the French, as Maria Theresa's allies, occupied the town,
and, much to the irritation of Goethe's father, who was a stanch
partisan of Frederick the Great, a French lieutenant, Count Thoranc, was
quartered on the Goethe household. The foreign occupation also led to
the establishment of a French troupe of actors, and to their
performances the boy, through his grandfather's influence, had free
access. Goethe has also recorded his memories of another picturesque
event, the coronation of the emperor Joseph II. in the Frankfort Romer
or town hall in 1764; but these memories were darkened by being
associated in his mind with the tragic denouement of his first love
affair. The object of this passion was a certain Gretchen, who seems to
have taken advantage of the boy's interest in her to further the
dishonest ends of one of her friends. The discovery of the affair and
the investigation that followed cooled Goethe's ardour and caused him to
turn his attention seriously to the studies which were to prepare him
for the university. Meanwhile the literary instinct had begun to show
itself; we hear of a novel in letters--a kind 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 Hollenfahrt 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
Schonkopf, 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 the
_Neue Lieder_, published in 1770, express very directly Goethe's
feelings for Kathchen Schonkopf. 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, and _Die 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 the _Volkslied_. 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 as
_Kleine Blumen, kleine Blatter_ and _Wie herrlich leuchtet mir die
Natur!_ mark the beginning of a new epoch in German lyric poetry. The
idyll of Sesenheim, as described in _Dichtung 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 the _Wanderers Sturmlied_, and in the bitter self-accusations of
_Clavigo_, it left deep wounds on the poet's sensitive soul.
To Strassburg we owe Goethe's first important drama, _Gotz von
Berlichingen_, or, as it was called in its earliest form, _Geschichte
Gottfriedens von Berlichingen dramatisiert_ (not published until 1831).
Revised under the now familiar title, it appeared in 1773, after
Goethe's return to Frankfort. In estimating this drama we must bear in
mind Goethe's own Strassburg life, and the turbulent spirit of his own
age, rather than the historical facts, which the poet found in the
autobiography of his hero published in 1731. The latter supplied only
the rough materials; the Gotz von Berlichingen whom Goethe drew, with
his lofty ideals of right and wrong, and his enthusiasm for freedom, is
a very different personage from the unscrupulous robber-knight of the
16th century, the rough friend of Franz von Sickingen and of the
revolting peasants. Still less historical justification is to be found
for the vacillating Weisslingen in whom Goethe executed poetic justice
on himself as the lover of Friederike, or in the women of the play, the
gentle Maria, the heartless Adelheid. But there is genial, creative
power in the very subjectivity of these characters, and a vigorous
dramatic life, which is irresistible in its appeal. With _Gotz von
Berlichingen_, Shakespeare's art first triumphed on the German stage,
and the literary movement known as _Sturm und Drang_ was inaugurated.
Having received his degree in Strassburg, Goethe returned home in August
1771, and began his initiation into the routine of an advocate's
profession. In the following year, in order to gain insight into another
side of his calling, he spent four months at Wetzlar, where the imperial
law-courts were established. But Goethe's professional duties had only a
small share in the eventful years which lay between his return from
Strassburg and that visit to Weimar at the end of 1775, which turned the
whole course of his career, and resulted in his permanent attachment to
the Weimar court. Goethe's life in Frankfort was a round of stimulating
literary intercourse; in J. H. Merck (1741-1791), an army official in
the neighbouring town of Darmstadt, he found a friend and mentor, whose
irony and common-sense served as a corrective to his own exuberance of
spirits. Wetzlar brought new friends and another passion, that for
Charlotte Buff, the daughter of the _Amtmann_ there--a love-story which
has been immortalized in _Werthers Leiden_--and again the young poet's
nature was obsessed by a love which was this time strong enough to bring
him to the brink of that suicide with which the novel ends. A visit to
the Rhine, where new interests and the attractions of Maximiliane von
Laroche, a daughter of Wieland's friend, the novelist Sophie von
Laroche, brought partial healing; his intense preoccupation with
literary work on his return to Frankfort did the rest. In 1775 Goethe
was attracted by still another type of woman, Lili Schonemann, whose
mother was the widow of a wealthy Frankfort banker. A formal betrothal
took place, and the beauty of the lyrics which Lili inspired leaves no
room for doubt that here was a passion no less genuine than that for
Friederike or Charlotte. But Goethe--more worldly wise than on former
occasions--felt instinctively that the gay, social world in which Lili
moved was not really congenial to him. A visit to Switzerland in the
summer of 1775 may not have weakened his interest in her, but it at
least allowed him to regard her objectively; and, without tragic
consequences on either side, the passion was ultimately allowed to yield
to the dictates of common-sense. Goethe's departure for Weimar in
November made the final break less difficult.
The period from 1771 to 1775 was, in literary respects, the most
productive of the poet's life. It had been inaugurated with _Gotz von
Berlichingen_, and a few months later this tragedy was followed by
another, _Clavigo_, hardly less convincing in its character-drawing, and
reflecting even more faithfully than the former the experiences Goethe
had gone through in Strassburg. Again poetic justice is effected on the
unfortunate hero who has chosen his own personal advancement in
preference to his duty to the woman he loves; more pointedly than in
_Gotz_ is the moral enforced by Clavigo's worldly friend Carlos, that
the ground of Clavigo's tragic end lies not so much in the defiance of a
moral law as in the hero's vacillation and want of character. With _Die
Leiden des jungen Werthers_ (1774), the literary precipitate of the
author's own experiences in Wetzlar, Goethe succeeded in attracting, as
no German had done before him, the attention of Europe. Once more it was
the gospel that the world belongs to the strong, which lay beneath the
surface of this romance. This, however, was not the lesson which was
drawn from it by Goethe's contemporaries; they shed tears of sympathy
over the lovelorn youth whose burden becomes too great for him to bear.
While _Gotz_ inaugurated the manlier side of the _Sturm und Drang_
literature, _Werther_ was responsible for its sentimental excesses. And
to the sentimental rather than to the heroic side belongs also _Stella_,
"a drama for lovers," in which the poet again reproduced, if with less
fidelity than in _Werther_, certain aspects of his own love troubles. A
lighter vein is to be observed in various dramatic satires written at
this time, such as _Gotter_, _Helden und Wieland_ (1774), _Hanswursts
Hochzeit_, _Fastnachtsspiel vom Pater Brey_, _Satyros_, and in the
_Singspiele_, _Erwin und Elmire_ (1775) and _Claudine von Villa Bella_
(1776); while in the _rankfurter Gelehrte Anzeiger_ (1772-1773), Goethe
drove home the principles of the new movement of _Sturm und Drang_ in
terse and pointed criticism. The exuberance of the young poet's genius
is also to be seen in the many unfinished fragments of this period; at
one time we find him occupied with dramas on _Caesar_ and _Mahomet_, at
another with an epic on _Der ewige Jude_, and again with a tragedy on
_Prometheus_, of which a magnificent fragment has passed into his works.
Greatest of all the torsos of this period, however, was the
dramatization of _Faust_. Thanks to a manuscript copy of the play in its
earliest form--discovered as recently as 1887--we are now able to
distinguish how much of this tragedy was the immediate product of the
_Sturm und Drang_, and to understand the intentions with which the young
poet began his masterpiece. Goethe's hero changed with the author's
riper experience and with his new conceptions of man's place and duties
in the world, but the Gretchen tragedy was taken over into the finished
poem, practically unaltered, from the earliest _Faust_ of the _Sturm und
Drang_. With these wonderful scenes, the most intensely tragic in all
German literature, Goethe's poetry in this period reaches its climax.
Still another important work, however, was conceived, and in large
measure written at this time, the drama of _Egmont_, which was not
published until 1788. This work may, to some extent, be regarded as
supplementary to _Faust_; it presents the lighter, more cheerful and
optimistic side of Goethe's philosophy in these years; Graf Egmont, the
most winning and fascinating of the poet's heroes, is endowed with that
"demonic" power over the sympathies of men and women, which Goethe
himself possessed in so high a degree. But _Egmont_ depends for its
interest almost solely on two characters, Egmont himself and Klarchen,
Gretchen's counterpart; regarded as a drama, it demonstrates the
futility of that defiance of convention and rules with which the _Sturm
und Drang_ set out. It remained for Goethe, in the next period of his
life, to construct on classic models 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. As
Friederike had fitted into the background of Goethe's Strassburg life,
Lotte into that of Wetzlar, and Lili into the gaieties of Frankfort, so
now Charlotte von Stein, the wife of a Weimar official, was the
personification of the more aristocratic ideals of Weimar society. We
possess only the poet's share of his correspondence with Frau von Stein,
but it is possible to infer from it that, of all Goethe's loves, this
was intellectually the most worthy of him. Frau von Stein was a woman of
refined literary taste and culture, seven years older than he and the
mother of seven children. There was something more spiritual, something
that partook rather of the passionate friendships of the 18th century
than of love in Goethe's relations with her. Frau von Stein dominated
the poet's life for twelve years, until his journey to Italy in
1786-1788. Of other events of this period the most notable were two
winter journeys, the first in 1777, to the Harz Mountains, the second,
two years later, to Switzerland--journeys which gave Goethe scope for
that introspection and reflection for which his Weimar life left him
little time. On the second of these journeys he revisited Friederike in
Sesenheim, saw Lili, who had married and settled in Strassburg, and made
the personal acquaintance of Lavater in Zurich.
The literary results of these years cannot be compared with those of the
preceding period; they are virtually limited to a few wonderful lyrics,
such as _Wanderers Nachtlied_, _An den Mond_, _Gesang der Geister uber
den Wassern_, or ballads, such as _Der Erlkonig_, a charming little
drama, _Die Geschwister_ (1776), in which the poet's relations to both
Lili and Frau von Stein seem to be reflected, a dramatic satire, _Der
Triumph der Empfindsamkeit_ (1778), and a number of _Singspiele_, _Lila_
(1777), _Die Fischerin_, _Scherz, List und Rache_, and _Jery und Bately_
(1780). But greater works were in preparation. A religious epic, _Die
Geheimnisse_, and a tragedy _Elpenor_, did not, it is true, advance much
further than plans; but in 1777, under the influence of the theatrical
experiments at the Weimar court, Goethe conceived and in great measure
wrote a novel of the theatre, which was to have borne the title _Wilhelm
Meisters theatralische Sendung_; and in 1779 himself took part in a
representation before the court at Ettersburg, of his drama _Iphigenie
auf Tauris_. This _Iphigenie_ was, however, in prose; in the following
year Goethe remoulded it in iambics, but it was not until he went to
Rome that the drama finally received the form in which we know it.
In September, 1786 Goethe set out from Karlsbad--secretly and
stealthily, his plan known only to his servant--on that memorable
journey to Italy, to which he had looked forward with such intense
longing; he could not cross the Alps quickly enough, so impatient was he
to set foot in Italy. He travelled by way of Munich, the Brenner and
Lago di Garda to Verona and Venice, and from thence to Rome, where he
arrived on the 29th of October 1786. Here he gave himself up
unreservedly to the new impressions which crowded on him, and he was
soon at home among the German artists in Rome, who welcomed him warmly.
In the spring of 1787 he extended his journey as far as Naples and
Sicily, returning to Rome in June 1787, where he remained until his
final departure for Germany on the 2nd of April 1788. It is difficult to
exaggerate the importance of Goethe's Italian journey. He himself
regarded it as a kind of climax to his life; never before had he
attained such complete understanding of his genius and mission in the
world; it afforded him a vantage-ground from which he could renew the
past and make plans for the future. In Weimar he had felt that he was no
longer in sympathy with the _Sturm und Drang_, but it was Italy which
first taught him clearly what might take the place of that movement in
German poetry. To the modern reader, who may 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 of Italy. He went to Rome in Winckelmann's
footsteps; it was the antique he sought, and his interest in the artists
of the Renaissance was virtually restricted to their imitation of
classic models. This search for the classic ideal is reflected in the
works he completed or wrote under the Italian sky. The calm beauty of
Greek tragedy is seen in the new iambic version of _Iphigenie auf
Tauris_ (1787); the classicism of the Renaissance gives the ground-tone
to the wonderful drama of _Torquato Tasso_ (1790), in which the conflict
of poetic genius with the prosaic world is transmuted into imperishable
poetry. Classic, too, in this sense, were the plans of a drama on
_Iphigenie auf Delphos_ and of an epic, _Nausikaa_. Most interesting of
all, however, is the reflection of the classic spirit in works already
begun in earlier days, such as _Egmont_ and _Faust_. The former drama
was finished in Italy and appeared in 1788, the latter was brought a
step further forward, part of it being published as a _Fragment_ in
1790.
Disappointment in more senses than one awaited Goethe on his return to
Weimar. He came back from Italy with a new philosophy of life, a
philosophy at once classic and pagan, and with very definite ideas of
what constituted literary excellence. But Germany had not advanced; in
1788 his countrymen were still under the influence of that _Sturm und
Drang_ from which the poet had fled. The times seemed to him more out of
joint than ever, and he withdrew into himself. Even his relations to the
old friends were changed. Frau von Stein had not known of his flight to
Italy until she received a letter from Rome; but he looked forward to
her welcome on his return. The months of absence, however, the change he
had undergone, and doubtless those lighter loves of which the _Romische
Elegien_ bear evidence, weakened the Weimar memories; if he left Weimar
as Frau von Stein's lover he returned only as her friend; and she
naturally resented the change. Goethe, meanwhile, satisfied to continue
the freer customs to which he had adapted himself in Rome, found a new
mistress in Christiane Vulpius (1765-1816), the least interesting of all
the women who attracted him. But Christiane gradually filled up a gap in
the poet's life; she gave him, 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 friends
ignored her; and she, who had suited the poet's whim when he desired to
shut himself off from all that might dim the recollection of Italy,
became with the years an indispensable helpmate to him. On the birth in
1789 of his son, Goethe had some thought of legalizing his relations
with Christiane, but this intention was not realized until 1806, when
the invasion of Weimar by the French 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 this _Campagne in
Frankreich_ and of the _Belagerung von Mainz_, at which he was also
present in 1793. His literary work naturally suffered under these
distractions. _Tasso_, and the edition of the _Schriften_ in which it
was to appear, had still to be completed on his return from Italy; the
_Romische Elegien_, perhaps the most Latin of all his works, were
published in 1795, and the _Venetianische 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 regime meant the abrogation of all law and order, and
he gave voice to his antagonism to the new democratic principles in the
dramas _Der Grosskophta_ (1792), _Der Burgergeneral_ (1793), and in the
unfinished fragments _Die Aufgeregten_ and _Das Madchen von Oberkirch_.
The spirited translation of the epic of _Reinecke Fuchs_ (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 important _Versuch, die Metamorphose der
Pflanzen zu erklaren_, 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 a formation in the human jaw-bone
analogous to the intermaxillary bone in apes; and in 1791 and 1792
appeared two parts of his _Beitrage zur Optik_.
Meanwhile, however, Goethe had again taken up the novel of the theatre
which he had begun years before, with a view to finishing it and
including it in the edition of his _Neue Schriften_ (1792-1800).
_Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung_ became _Wilhelm Meisters
Lehrjahre_; the novel of purely theatrical interests was widened out to
embrace the history of a young man's apprenticeship to life. The change
of plan explains, although it may not exculpate, the formlessness and
loose construction of the work, its extremes of realistic detail and
poetic allegory. A hero, who was probably originally intended to
demonstrate the failure of the vacillating temperament when brought face
to face with the problems of art, proved ill-adapted to demonstrate
those precepts for the guidance of life with which the _Lehrjahre_
closes; unstable of purpose, Wilhelm Meister is not so much an
illustration of the author's life-philosophy as a lay-figure on which he
demonstrates his views. _Wilhelm Meister_ is a work of extraordinary
variety, ranging from the commonplace realism of the troupe of strolling
players to the poetic romanticism of Mignon and the harper; its flashes
of intuitive criticism and its weighty apothegms add to its value as a
_Bildungsroman_ in the best sense of that word. Of all Goethe's works,
this exerted the most immediate and lasting influence on German
literature; it served as a model for the best fiction of the next thirty
years.
In completing _Wilhelm Meister_, Goethe found a sympathetic and
encouraging critic in Schiller, to whom he owed in great measure his
renewed interest in poetry. After years of tentative approaches on
Schiller's part, years in which that poet concealed even from himself
his desire for a friendly understanding with Goethe, the favourable
moment arrived; it was in June 1794, when Schiller was seeking
collaborators for his new periodical _Die Horen_; and his invitation
addressed to Goethe was the beginning of a friendship which continued
unbroken until the younger poet's death. The friendship of Goethe and
Schiller, of which their correspondence is a priceless record, had its
limitations; it was purely intellectual in character, a certain barrier
of personal reserve being maintained to the last. But for the literary
life of both poets the gain was incommensurable. As far as actual work
was concerned, Goethe went his own way as he had always been accustomed
to do; but the mere fact that he devoted himself with increasing
interest to literature was due to Schiller's stimulus. It was Schiller,
too, who induced him to undertake those studies on the nature of epic
and dramatic poetry which resulted in the epic of _Hermann und Dorothea_
and the fragment of the _Achilleis_; without the friendship there would
have been no _Xenien_ and no ballads, and it was his younger friend's
encouragement which induced Goethe to betake himself once more to the
"misty path" of _Faust_, and bring the first part of that drama to a
conclusion.
Goethe's share in the _Xenien_ (1796) may be briefly dismissed. This
collection of distichs, written in collaboration with Schiller, was
prompted by the indifference and animosity of contemporary criticism,
and its disregard for what the two poets regarded as the higher
interests of German poetry. The _Xenien_ succeeded as a retaliation on
the critics, but the masterpieces which followed them proved in the long
run much more effective weapons against the prevailing mediocrity. Prose
works like the _Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten_ (1795) were
unworthy of the poet's genius, and the translation of Benvenuto
Cellini's _Life_ (1796-1797) was only a translation. But in 1798
appeared _Hermann und Dorothea_, one of Goethe's most perfect poems. It
is indeed remarkable--when we consider by how much reflection and
theoretic discussion the composition of the poem was preceded and
accompanied--that it should make upon the reader so simple and "naive"
an impression; in this respect it is the triumph of an art that conceals
art. Goethe has here taken a simple story of village life, mirrored in
it the most pregnant ideas of his time, and presented it with a skill
which may well be called Homeric; but he has discriminated with the
insight of genius between the Homeric method of reproducing the heroic
life of primitive Greece and the same method as adapted to the
commonplace happenings of 18th-century Germany. In this respect he was
undoubtedly guided by a forerunner who has more right than he to the
attribute "naive," by J. H. Voss, the author of _Luise_. Hardly less
imposing in their calm, placid perfection are the poems with which, in
friendly rivalry, Goethe seconded the more popular ballads of his
friend; _Der Zauberlehrling_, _Der Gott und die Bayadere_, _Die Braut
von Korinth_, _Alexis und Dora_, _Der neue Pausias_ and _Die schone
Mullerin_--a cycle of poems in the style of the _Volkslied_--are among
the masterpieces of Goethe's poetry. On the other hand, even the
friendship with Schiller did not help him to add to his reputation as a
dramatist. _Die naturliche Tochter_ (1803), in which he began to embody
his ideas of the Revolution on a wide canvas, proved impossible on the
stage, and the remaining dramas, which were to have formed a trilogy,
were never written. Goethe's classic principles, when applied to the
swift, direct art of the theatre, were doomed to failure, and _Die
naturliche Tochter_, notwithstanding its good theoretic intention,
remains the most lifeless and shadowy of all his dramas. Even less in
touch with the living present were the various prologues and
_Festspiele_, such as _Palaophron und Neoterpe_ (1800), _Was wir
bringen_ (1802), which in these years he composed for the Weimar
theatre.
Goethe's classicism brought him into inevitable antagonism with the new
Romantic movement which had been inaugurated in 1798 by the _Athenaeum_,
edited by the brothers Schlegel. The sharpness of the conflict was,
however, blunted by the fact that, without exception, the young Romantic
writers looked up to Goethe as its master; they modelled their fiction
on _Wilhelm Meister_; they regarded his lyrics as the high-water mark of
German poetry; Goethe, Novalis declared, was the "Statthalter of poetry
on earth." With regard to painting and sculpture, however, Goethe felt
that a protest was necessary, if the insidious ideas propounded in works
like Wackenroder's _Herzensergiessungen_ were not to do irreparable
harm, by bringing back the confusion of the _Sturm und Drang_; and, as a
rejoinder to the Romantic theories, Goethe, in conjunction with his
friend Heinrich Meyer (1760-1832), published from 1798 to 1800 an art
review, _Die Propylaen_. Again, in _Winckelmann und seine Zeit_ (1805)
Goethe vigorously defended the classical ideals of which Winckelmann had
been the founder. But in the end he proved himself the greatest enemy to
the strict classic doctrine by the publication in 1808 of the completed
first part of _Faust_, a work which was accepted by contemporaries as a
triumph of Romantic art. _Faust_ is a patchwork of many colours. With
the aid of the vast body of _Faust_ literature which has sprung up in
recent years, and the many new documents bearing on its history--above
all, the so-called _Urfaust_, to which reference has already been
made--we are able now to ascribe to their various periods the component
parts of the work; it is possible to discriminate between the _Sturm und
Drang_ hero of the opening scenes and of the Gretchen tragedy--the
contemporary of Gotz and Clavigo--and the superimposed Faust of calmer
moral and intellectual ideals--a Faust who corresponds to Hermann and
Wilhelm Meister. In its original form the poem was the dramatization of
a specific and individualized story; in the years of Goethe's friendship
with Schiller it was extended to embody the higher strivings of
18th-century humanism; ultimately, as we shall see, it became, in the
second part, a vast allegory of human life and activity. Thus the
elements of which _Faust_ is composed were even more difficult to blend
than were those of _Wilhelm Meister_; but the very want of uniformity is
one source of the perennial fascination of the tragedy, and has made it
in a peculiar degree the national poem of the German people, the mirror
which reflects the national life and poetry from the outburst of _Sturm
und Drang_ to the well-weighed and tranquil classicism of Goethe's old
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 immediate connexion with the
literary movement of his day. His life moved on comparatively
uneventfully. Even the Napoleonic regime of 1806-1813 disturbed but
little his equanimity. Goethe, the cosmopolitan _Weltburger_ of the 18th
century, had himself no very intense feelings of patriotism, and, having
seen Germany flourish as a group of small states under enlightened
despotisms, he had little confidence in the dreamers of 1813 who hoped
to see the glories of Barbarossa's empire revived. Napoleon, moreover,
he regarded not as the scourge of Europe, but as the defender of
civilization against the barbarism of the Slavs; and in the famous
interview between the two men at Erfurt the poet's admiration was
reciprocated by the French conqueror. Thus Goethe had no great sympathy
for the war of liberation which kindled young hearts from one end of
Germany to the other; and when the national enthusiasm rose to its
highest pitch he buried himself in those optical and morphological
studies, which, with increasing years, occupied more and more of his
time and interest.
The works and events of the last twenty-five years of Goethe's life may
be briefly summarized. In 1805, as we have seen, he suffered an
irreparable loss in the death of Schiller; in 1806, Christiane became
his legal wife, and to the same year belongs the magnificent tribute to
his dead friend, the _Epilog zu Schillers Glocke_. Two new friendships
about this time kindled in the poet something of the juvenile fire and
passion of younger days. Bettina von Arnim came into personal touch with
Goethe in 1807, and her _Briefwechsel Goethes mit einem Kinde_
(published in 1835) is, in its mingling of truth and fiction, one of the
most delightful products of the Romantic mind; but the episode was of
less importance for Goethe's life than Bettina would have us believe. On
the other hand, his interest in Minna Herzlieb, foster-daughter of the
publisher Frommann in Jena, was of a warmer nature, and has left its
traces on his sonnets.
In 1808, as we have seen, appeared the first part of _Faust_, and in
1809 it was followed by _Die Wahlverwandtschaften_. The novel, hardly
less than the drama, effected a change in the public attitude towards
the poet. Since the beginning of the century the conviction had been
gaining ground that Goethe's mission was accomplished, that the day of
his leadership was over; but here were two works which not merely
re-established his ascendancy, but proved that the old poet was in
sympathy with the movement of letters, and keenly alive to the change of
ideas which the new century had brought in its train. The intimate
psychological study of four minds, which forms the subject of the
_Wahlverwandtschaften_, was an essay in a new type of fiction, and
pointed out the way for developments of the German novel after the
stimulus of _Wilhelm Meister_ had exhausted itself. Less important than
_Die Wahlverwandtschaften_ was _Pandora_ (1810), the final product of
Goethe's classicism, and the most uncompromisingly classical and
allegorical of all his works. And in 1810, too, appeared his treatise on
_Farbenlehre_. In the following year the first volume of his
autobiography was published under the title _Aus meinem Leben, Dichtung
und Wahrheit_. The second and third volumes of this work followed in
1812 and 1814; the fourth, bringing the story of his life up to the
close of the Frankfort period in 1833, after his death. Goethe felt,
even late in life, too intimately bound up with Weimar to discuss in
detail his early life there, and he shrank from carrying his biography
beyond the year 1775. But a number of other publications--descriptions
of travel, such as the _Italienische Reise_ (1816-1817), the materials
for a continuation of _Dichtung und Wahrheit_ collected in _Tag- und
Jahreshefte_ (1830)--have also to be numbered among the writings which
Goethe has left us as documents of his life. Meanwhile no less valuable
biographical materials were accumulating in his diaries, his voluminous
correspondence and his conversations, as recorded by J. P. Eckermann,
the chancellor Muller and F. Soret. Several periodical publications,
_Uber Kunst und Altertum_ (1816-1832), _Zur Naturwissenschaft uberhaupt_
(1817-1824). _Zur Morphologie_ (1817-1824), bear witness to the
extraordinary breadth of Goethe's interests in these years. Art,
science, literature--little escaped his ken--and that not merely in
Germany: English writers, Byron, Scott and Carlyle, Italians like
Manzoni, French scientists and poets, could all depend on friendly words
of appreciation and encouragement from Weimar.
In _West-ostlicher Diwan_ (1819), a collection of lyrics--matchless in
form and even more concentrated in expression than those of earlier
days--which were suggested by a German translation of Hafiz, Goethe had
another surprise in store for his contemporaries. And, again, it was an
actual passion--that for Marianne von Willemer, whom he met in 1814 and
1815--which rekindled in him the lyric fire. Meanwhile the years were
thinning the ranks of Weimar society: Wieland, the last of Goethe's
greater literary contemporaries, died in 1813, his wife in 1816,
Charlotte von Stein in 1827 and Duke Charles Augustus in 1828. Goethe's
retirement from the direction of the theatre in 1817 meant for him a
break with the literary life of the day. In 1822 a passion for a young
girl, Ulrike von Levetzow, whom he met at Marienbad, inspired the fine
_Trilogie der Leidenschaft_, and between 1821 and 1829 appeared the
long-expected and long-promised continuation of _Wilhelm Meister,
Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre_. The latter work, however, was a
disappointment: perhaps it could not have been otherwise. Goethe had
lost the thread of his romance and it was difficult for him to resume
it. Problems of the relation of the individual to society and industrial
questions were to have formed the theme of the _Wanderjahre_; but since
the French Revolution these problems had themselves entered on a new
phase and demanded a method of treatment which it was not easy for the
old poet to learn. Thus his intentions were only partially carried out,
and the volumes were filled out by irrelevant stories, which had been
written at widely different periods.
But the crowning achievement of Goethe's literary life was the
completion of _Faust_. The poem had accompanied him from early 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 impressive realism of the _Urfaust_. It is a
phantasmagory; a drama the actors in which are not creatures of flesh
and blood, but the shadows of an unreal world of allegory. The lover of
Gretchen had, as far as poetic continuity is concerned, disappeared with
the close of the first part. In the second part it is virtually a new
Faust who, at the hands of a new Mephistopheles, goes out into a world
that is not ours. Yet behind these unconvincing shadows of an imperial
court with its financial difficulties, of the classical
_Walpurgisnacht_, of the fantastic creation of the Homunculus, the noble
Helena episode and the impressive mystery-scene of the close, where the
centenarian Faust finally triumphs over the powers of evil, there lies a
philosophy of life, a ripe wisdom born of experience, such as no
European poet had given to the world since the Renaissance. _Faust_ has
been well called the "divine comedy" of 18th-century humanism.
The second part of _Faust_ 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 Weimar _Goethe-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 objective spirit, and sprang from
what might be called a conscious artistic impulse; by far the
larger--and the better--part is the immediate reflex of his feelings and
experiences.
It is as a lyric poet that Goethe's supremacy is least likely to be
challenged; he has given his nation, whose highest literary expression
has in all ages been essentially lyric, its greatest songs. No other
German poet has succeeded in attuning feeling, sentiment and thought so
perfectly to the music of words as he; none has expressed so fully that
spirituality in which the quintessence of German lyrism lies. Goethe's
dramas, on the other hand, have not, in the eyes of his nation,
succeeded in holding their own beside Schiller's; but the reason is
rather because Goethe, from what might be called a wilful obstinacy,
refused to be bound by the conventions of the theatre, than because he
was deficient in the cunning of the dramatist. For, as an interpreter of
human character in the drama, Goethe is without a rival among modern
poets, and there is not one of his plays that does not contain a few
scenes or characters which bear indisputable testimony to his mastery.
_Faust_ is Germany's most national drama, and it remains perhaps for the
theatre of the future to prove itself capable of popularizing
psychological masterpieces like _Tasso_ and _Iphigenie_. It is as a
novelist that Goethe has suffered most by the lapse of time. The
_Sorrows of Werther_ no longer moves us to tears, and even _Wilhelm
Meister_ and _Die Wahlverwandtschaften_ require more understanding for
the conditions under which they were written than do _Faust_ or
_Egmont_. Goethe could fill his prose with rich wisdom, but he was only
the perfect artist in verse.
Little attention is nowadays paid to Goethe's work in other fields, work
which he himself in some cases prized more highly than his poetry. It is
only as an illustration of his many-sidedness and his manifold activity
that we now turn to his work as a statesman, as a theatre-director, as a
practical political economist. His art-criticism is symptomatic of a
phase of European taste which tried in vain to check the growing
individualism of Romanticism. His scientific studies and discoveries
awaken only an historical interest. We marvel at the obstinacy with
which he, with inadequate mathematical knowledge, opposed the Newtonian
theory of light and colour; and at his championship of "Neptunism," the
theory of aqueous origin, as opposed to "Vulcanism," that of igneous
origin of the earth's crust. Of far-reaching importance was, on the
other hand, his foreshadowing of the Darwinian theory in his works on
the metamorphosis of plants and on animal morphology. Indeed, the
deduction to be drawn from Goethe's contributions to botany and 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 virtue of his enunciation of what has now
become one of the commonplaces of natural science--organic evolution.
Modern, too, was the outlook of the aging poet on the changing social
conditions of the age, wonderfully sympathetic his attitude towards
modern industry, which steam was just beginning to establish on a new
basis, and towards modern democracy. The Europe of his later years was
very different from the idyllic and enlightened autocracy of the 18th
century, in which he had spent his best years and to which he had
devoted his energies; yet Goethe was at home in it.
From the philosophic movement, in which Schiller and the Romanticists
were so deeply involved, Goethe stood apart. Comparatively early in life
he had found in Spinoza the philosopher who responded to his needs;
Spinoza taught him to see in nature the "living garment of God," and
more he did not seek or need to know. As a convinced realist he took his
standpoint on nature and experience, and could afford to look on
objectively at the controversies of the metaphysicians. Kant he by no
means ignored, and under Schiller's guidance he learned much from him;
but of the younger thinkers, only Schelling, whose mystic
nature-philosophy was a development of Spinoza's ideas, touched a
sympathetic chord in his nature. As a moralist and a guide to the
conduct of life--an aspect of Goethe's work which Carlyle, viewing him
through the coloured glasses of Fichtean idealism, emphasized and
interpreted not always justly--Goethe was a powerful force on German
life in years of political and intellectual depression. It is difficult
even still to get beyond the maxims of practical wisdom he scattered so
liberally through his writings, the lessons to be learned from _Meister_
and _Faust_, or even that calm, optimistic fatalism which never deserted
Goethe, and was so completely justified by the tenor of his life. If the
philosophy of Spinoza provided the poet with a religion which made
individual creeds and dogmas unnecessary and impossible, so Leibnitz's
doctrine of predestinism supplied the foundations for his faith in the
divine mission of human life.
This many-sided activity is a tribute to the greatness of Goethe's mind
and personality; we may regard him merely as the embodiment of his
particular age, or as a poet "for all time"; but with one opinion all
who have felt the power of Goethe's genius are in agreement--the opinion
which was condensed in Napoleon's often cited words, uttered after the
meeting at Erfurt: _Voila un homme!_ Of all modern men, Goethe is the
most universal type of genius. It is the full, rich humanity of his life
and personality--not the art behind which the artist disappears, or the
definite pronouncements of the thinker or the teacher--that constitutes
his claim to a place in the front rank of men of letters. His life was
his greatest work.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--(a) _Collected Works, Diaries, Correspondence,
Conversations_. The following authorized editions of Goethe's writings
appeared in the poet's lifetime: _Schriften_ (8 vols., Leipzig,
1787-1790); _Neue Schriften_ (7 vols., Berlin, 1792-1800); _Werke_ (13
vols., Stuttgart, 1806-1810); _Werke_ (20 vols., Stuttgart,
1815-1819); to which six volumes were added in 1820-1822; Werke
(Vollstandige Ausgabe letzter Hand) (40 vols., Stuttgart, 1827-1830).
Goethe's _Nachgelassene Werke_ appeared as a continuation of this
edition in 15 volumes (Stuttgart, 1832-1834), to which five volumes
were added in 1842. These were followed by several editions of
Goethe's _Samtliche Werke_, mostly in forty volumes, published by
Cotta of Stuttgart. The first critical edition with notes was
published by Hempel, Berlin, in thirty-six volumes, 1868-1879; that in
Kurschner's _Deutsche Nationalliteratur_, vols. 82-117 (1882-1897) is
also important. In 1887 the monumental Weimar edition, which is now
approaching completion, began to appear; it is divided into four
sections: I. _Werke_ (c. 56 vols.); II. _Naturwissenschaftliche Werke_
(12 vols.); III. _Tagebucher_ (13 vols.); IV. _Briefe_ (c. 45 vols.).
Of other recent editions the most noteworthy are: Samtliche Werke
(Jubilaums-Ausgabe), edited by E. von der Hellen (40 vols., Stuttgart,
1902 ff.); _Werke_, edited by K. Heinemann (30 vols., Leipzig, 1900
ff.), and the cheap edition of the _Samtliche Werke_, edited by L.
Geiger (44 vols., Leipzig, 1901). There are also innumerable editions
of selected works; reference need only be made here to the useful
collection of the early writings and letters published by S. Hirzel
with an introduction by M. Bernays, _Der junge Goethe_ (3 vols.,
Leipzig, 1875, 2nd ed., 1887). A French translation of Goethe's
_Oeuvres completes_, by J. Porchat, appeared in 9 vols., at Paris, in
1860-1863. There is, as yet, no uniform English edition, but Goethe's
chief works have all been frequently translated and a number of them
will be found in Bohn's standard library.
The definitive edition of Goethe's diaries and letters is that forming
Sections III. and IV. of the Weimar edition. Collections of selected
letters based on the Weimar edition have been published by E. von der
Hellen (6 vols., 1901 ff.), and by P. Stein (8 vols., 1902 ff.). Of
the many separate collections of Goethe's correspondence mention may
be made of the _Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe_, edited by
Goethe himself (1828-1829; 4th ed., 1881; also several cheap reprints.
English translation by L. D. Schmitz, 1877-1879); _Briefwechsel
zwischen Goethe und Zelter_ (6 vols., 1833-1834; reprint in Reclam's
_Universalbibliothek_, 1904; English translation by A. D. Coleridge,
1887); _Bettina von Arnim, Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde_
(1835; 4th ed., 1890; English translation, 1838); _Briefe von und an
Goethe_, edited by F. W. Riemer (1846); _Goethes Briefe an Frau von
Stein_, edited by A. Scholl (1848-1851; 3rd ed. by J. Wahle,
1899-1900); _Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und K. F. von Reinhard_
(1850); _Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Knebel_ (2 vols., 1851);
_Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Staatsrat Schultz_ (1853);
_Briefwechsel des Herzogs Karl August mit Goethe_ (2 vols., 1863);
_Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Kaspar Graf von Sternberg_ (1866);
_Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Korrespondenz_, and _Goethes
Briefwechsel mit den Gebrudern von Humboldt_, edited by F. T.
Bratranek (1874-1876); _Goethes und Carlyles Briefwechsel_ (1887),
also in English; _Goethe und die Romantik_, edited by C. Schuddekopf
and O. Walzel (2 vols., 1898-1899); _Goethe und Lavater_, edited by H.
Funck (1901); _Goethe und Osterreich_, edited by A. Sauer (2 vols.,
1902-1903). Besides the correspondence with Schiller and Zelter,
Bonn's library contains a translation of _Early and Miscellaneous_
_Letters_, by E. Bell (1884). The chief collections of Goethe's
conversations are: J. P. Eckermann, _Gesprache mit Goethe_ (1836; vol.
iii., also containing conversations with Soret, 1848; 7th ed. by H.
Duntzer, 1899; also new edition by L. Geiger, 1902; English
translation by J. Oxenford, 1850). The complete conversations with
Soret have been published in German translation by C. A. H. Burkhardt
(1905); _Goethes Unterhaltungen mit dem Kanzler F. von Muller_ (1870).
Goethe's collected _Gesprache_ were published by W. von Biedermann in
10 vols. (1889-1896).
(b) _Biography._--Goethe's autobiography, _Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung
und Wahrheit_, appeared in three parts between 1811 and 1814, a fourth
part, bringing the history of his life as far as his departure for
Weimar in 1775, in 1833 (English translation by J. Oxenford, 1846); it
is supplemented by other biographical writings, as the _Italienische
Reise, Aus einer Reise in die Schweiz im Jahre 1797_; _Aus einer Reise
am Rhein, Main und Neckar in den Jahren 1814 und 1815, Tag- und
Jahreshefte_, &c., and especially by his diaries and correspondence.
The following are the more important biographies: H. Doring, _Goethes
Leben_ (1828; subsequent editions, 1833, 1849, 1856); H. Viehoff,
_Goethes Leben_ (4 vols., 1847-1854; 5th ed., 1887); J. W. Schafer,
_Goethes Leben_ (2 vols., 1851; 3rd ed., 1877); G. H. Lewes, _The Life
and Works of Goethe_ (2 vols., 1855; 2nd ed., 1864; 3rd ed., 1875;
cheap reprint, 1906; the German translation by J. Frese is in its 18th
edition, 1900; a shorter biography was published by Lewes in 1873
under the title _The Story of Goethe's Life)_; W. Mezieres, _W.
Goethe, les oeuvres expliquees par la vie_ (1872-1873); A. Bossert,
_Goethe_ (1872-1873); K. Goedeke, _Goethes Leben und Schriften_ (1874;
2nd ed., 1877); H. Grimm, _Goethe: Vorlesungen_ (1876; 8th ed., 1903;
English translation, 1880); A. Hayward, _Goethe_ (1878); H. H.
Boyesen, _Goethe and Schiller, their Lives and Works_ (1879); H.
Duntzer, _Goethes Leben_ (1880; 2nd ed., 1883; English translation,
1883); A. Baumgartner, _Goethe, sein Leben und seine Werke_ (1885); J.
Sime, _Life of Goethe_ (1888); K. Heinemann, _Goethes Leben und Werke_
(1889; 3rd ed., 1903); R. M. Meyer, _Goethe_ (1894; 3rd ed., 1904); A.
Bielschowsky, _Goethe, sein Leben und seine Werke_ (vol. i., 1895; 5th
ed., 1904; vol. ii., 1903; English translation by W. A. Cooper, 1905
ff.); G. Witkowsky, Goethe (1899); H. G. Atkins, _J. W. Goethe_
(1904); P. Hansen and R. Meyer, _Goethe, hans Liv og Vaerker_ (1906).
Of writings on special periods and aspects of Goethe's life the more
important are as follows (the titles are arranged as far as possible
in the chronological sequence of the poet's life): H. Duntzer,
_Goethes Stammbaum_ (1894); K. Heinemann, _Goethes Mutter_ (1891; 6th
ed., 1900); P. Bastier, _La Mere de Goethe_ (1902); _Briefe der Frau
Rat_ (2 vols., 2nd ed., 1905); F. Ewart, _Goethes Vater_ (1899); G.
Witkowski, _Cornelia die Schwester Goethes_ (1903); P. Besson,
_Goethe, sa soeur et ses amies_ (1898); H. Duntzer, _Frauenbilder aus
Goethes Jugendzeit_ (1852); W. von Biedermann, _Goethe und Leipzig_
(1865); P. F. Lucius, _Friederike Brion_ (1878; 3rd ed., 1904); A.
Bielschowsky, _Friederike Brion_ (1880); F. E. von Durckheim, _Lili's
Bild geschichtlich entworfen_ (1879; 2nd ed., 1894); W. Herbst,
_Goethe in Wetzlar_ (1881); A. Diezmann, _Goethe und die lustige Zeit
in Weimar_ (1857; 2nd ed., 1901); H. Duntzer, _Goethe und Karl August_
(1859-1864; 2nd ed., 1888); also, by the same author, _Aus Goethes
Freundeskreise_ (1868) and _Charlotte von Stein_ (2 vols., 1874); J.
Haarhuus, _Auf Goethes Spuren in Italien_ (1896-1898); O. Harnack,
_Zur Nachgeschichte der italienischen Reise_ (1890); H. Grimm,
_Schiller und Goethe_ (_Essays_, 1858; 3rd ed., 1884); G. Berlit,
_Goethe und Schiller im personlichen Verkehre, nach brieflichen
Mitteilungen von H. Voss_ (1895); E. Pasque, _Goethes Theaterleitung
in Weimar_ (2 vols., 1863); C. A. H. Burkhards, _Das Repertoire des
weimarischen Theaters unter Goethes Leitung_ (1891); J. Wahle, _Das
Weimarer Hoftheater unter Goethes Leitung_ (1892); O. Harnack, _Goethe
in der Epoche seiner Vollendung_ (2nd ed., 1901); J. Barbey
d'Aurevilly, _Goethe et Diderot_ (1880); A Fischer, _Goethe und
Napoleon_ (1899; 2nd ed., 1900); R. Steig, _Goethe und die Gebruder
Grimm_ (1892).
(c) _Criticism._--H. G. Graef, _Goethe uber seine Dichtungen_ (1901
ff.); J. W. Braun, _Goethe im Urteile seiner Zeitgenossen_ (3 vols.,
1883-1885); T. Carlyle, _Essays on Goethe_ (1828-1832); X. Marmier,
_Etudes sur Goethe_ (1835); W. von Biedermann, _Goethe-Forschungen_
(1879, 1886); J. Minor and A. Sauer, _Studien zur Goethe-Philologie_
(1880); H. Duntzer, _Abhandlungen zu Goethes Leben und Werken_ (1881);
A. Scholl, _Goethe in Hauptzugen seines Lebens und Wirkens_ (1882); V.
Hehn, _Gedanken uber Goethe_ (1884; 4th ed., 1900); W. Scherer,
_Aufsatze uber Goethe_ (1886); J. R. Seeley, _Goethe reviewed after
Sixty Years_ (1894); E. Dowden, _New Studies in Literature_ (1895); E.
Rod, _Essai sur Goethe_ (1898); A. Luther, _Goethe, sechs Vortrage_
(1905); R. Saitschik, _Goethes Charakter_ (1898); W. Bode, _Goethes
Lebenskunst_ (1900; 2nd ed., 1902); by the same, _Goethes Asthetik_
(1901); T. Vollbehr, _Goethe und die bildende Kunst_ (1895); E.
Lichtenberger, _Etudes sur les poesies lyriques de Goethe_ (1878); T.
Achelis, _Grundzuge der Lyrik Goethes_ (1900); B. Litzmann, _Goethes
Lyrik_ (1903); R. Riemann, _Goethes Romantechnik_ (1901); R. Virchow,
_Goethe als Naturforscher_ (1861); E. Caro, _La Philosophie de Goethe_
(1866; 2nd ed., 1870); R. Steiner, _Goethes Weltanschauung_ (1897); F.
Siebeck, _Goethe als Denker_ (1902); F. Baldensperger, Goethe en
France (1904); S. Waetzoldt, _Goethe und die Romantik_ (1888).
More special treatises dealing with individual works are the
following: W. Scherer, _Aus Goethes Fruhzeit_ (1879); R. Weissenfels,
_Goethe in Sturm und Drang_, vol. i. (1894); W. Wilmanns,
_Quellenstudien zu Goethes Gotz von Berlichingen_ (1874); J.
Baechtold, _Goethes Gotz von Berlichingen in dreifacher Gestalt_
(1882); J. W. Appell, _Werther und seine Zeit_ (1855; 4th ed., 1896);
E. Schmidt, _Richardson, Rousseau und Goethe_ (1875); M. Herrmann,
_Das Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilen_ (1900); E. Schmidt, Goethes
Faust in ursprunglicher Gestalt (1887; 5th ed., 1901); J. Collin,
_Goethes Faust in seiner altesten Gestalt_ (1896); H. Hettner,
_Goethes Iphigenie in ihrem Verhaltnis zur Bildungsgeschichte des
Dichters_ (1861; in _Kleine Schriften_, 1884); K. Fischer, _Goethes
Iphigenie_ (1888); F. T. Bratranek, _Goethes Egmont und Schillers
Wallenstein_ (1862); C. Schuchardt, _Goethes italienische Reise_
(1862); H. Duntzer, _Iphigenie auf Tauris; die drei altesten
Bearbeitungen_ (1854); F. Kern, _Goethes Tasso_ (1890); J. Schubart,
_Die philosophischen Grundgedanken in Goethes Wilhelm Meister_ (1896);
E. Boas, _Schiller und Goethe in Xenienkampf_ (1851); E. Schmidt and
B. Suphan, _Xenien 1796, nach den Handschriften_ (1893); W. von
Humboldt, _Asthetische Versuche: Hermann und Dorothea_ (1799); V.
Hehn, _Uber Goethes Hermann und Dorothea_ (1893); A. Fries, _Quellen
und Komposition der Achilleis_ (1901); K. Alt, _Studien zur
Entstehungsgeschichte von Dichtung und Wahrheit_ (1898); A. Jung,
_Goethes Wanderjahre und die wichtigsten Fragen des 19. Jahrhunderts_
(1854); F. Kreyssig, _Vorlesungen uber Goethes Faust_ (1866); the
editions of _Faust_ by G. von Loeper (2 vols., 1879), and K. J.
Schroer (2 vols., 3rd and 4th ed., 1898-1903); K. Fischer, _Goethes
Faust_ (3 vols., 1893, 1902, 1903); O. Pniower, _Goethes Faust,
Zeugnisse und Excurse zu seiner Entstehungsgeschichte_ (1899); J.
Minor, _Goethes Faust, Entstehungsgeschichte und Erklarung_ (2 vols.,
1901).
(d) _Bibliographical Works, Goethe-Societies, &c._--L. Unflad, _Die
Goethe-Literatur in Deutschland_ (1878); S. Hirzel, _Verzeichnis einer
Goethe-Bibliothek_ (1884), to which G. von Loeper and W. von
Biedermann have supplied supplements. F. Strehlke, _Goethes Briefe:
Verzeichnis unter Angabe der Quelle_ (1882-1884); _British Museum
Catalogue of Printed Books: Goethe_ (1888); Goedeke's _Grundriss zur
Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung_ (2nd ed., vol. iv. 1891); and the
bibliographies in the _Goethe-Jahrbuch_ (since 1880). Also K. Hoyer,
_Zur Einfuhrung in die Goethe-Literatur_ (1904). On Goethe in England
see E. Oswald, _Goethe in England and America_ (1899; 2nd ed., 1909);
W. Heinemann, _A Bibliographical List of the English Translations and
Annotated Editions of Goethe's Faust_ (1886). Reference may also be
made here to F. Zarncke's _Verzeichnis der Originalaufnahmen von
Goethes Bildnissen_ (1888).
_A Goethe-Gesellschaft_ was founded at Weimar in 1885, and numbers
over 2800 members; its publications include the annual
_Goethe-Jahrbuch_ (since 1880), and a series of _Goethe-Schriften_. A
_Goethe-Verein_ has existed in Vienna since 1887, and an English
Goethe society, which has also issued several volumes of publications,
since 1886. (J. G. R.)
_Goethe's Descendants._--Goethe's only son, AUGUST, born on the 25th of
December 1789 at Weimar, married in 1817 Ottilie von Pogwisch
(1796-1872), who had come as a child to Weimar with her mother (_nee_
Countess Henckel von Donnersmarck). The marriage was a very unhappy one,
the husband having no qualities that could appeal to a woman who,
whatever the censorious might say of her moral character, was
distinguished to the last by a lively intellect and a singular charm.
August von Goethe, whose sole distinction was his birth and his position
as grand-ducal chamberlain, died in Italy, on the 27th of October 1830,
leaving three children; WALTHER WOLFGANG, born on April 9, 1818, died on
April 15, 1885; WOLFGANG MAXIMILIAN, 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 had musical
ambitions, studied under Mendelssohn and Weinlig at Leipzig, under Loewe
at Stettin, and afterwards at Vienna. He published a few songs of no
great merit, and had at his death no more than the reputation among his
friends of a kindly and 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 his fate and gloomy isolation from a world that seemed to
have no use for him but as a curiosity. From the first, too, he was
hampered by wretched health; at the age of sixteen he was subjected to
one of those terrible attacks of neuralgia which were to torment him to
the last; physically and mentally alike he stood in tragic contrast with
his grandfather, in whose gigantic personality the vigour of his race
seems to have been exhausted.
From 1839 to 1845 Wolfgang studied law at Bonn, Jena, Heidelberg and
Berlin, taking his degree of _doctor juris_ at Heidelberg in 1845.
During this period he had made his first literary efforts. His
_Studenten-Briefe_ (Jena, 1842), a medley of letters and lyrics, are
wholly conventional. This was followed by _Der Mensch und die
elementarische Natur_ (Stuttgart and Tubingen, 1845), in three parts
(_Beitrage_): (1) an historical and philosophical dissertation on the
relations of mankind and the "soul of nature," largely influenced by
Schelling, (2) a dissertation on the juridical side of the question, _De
fragmento Vegoiae_, being the thesis presented for his degree, (3) a
lyrical drama, _Erlinde_. In this last, as in his other poetic attempts,
Wolfgang showed a considerable measure of inherited or acquired ability,
in his wealth of language and his easy mastery of the difficulties of
rhythm and rhyme. But this was all. The work was characteristic of his
self-centred isolation: ultra-romantic at a time when Romanticism was
already an outworn fashion, remote alike from the spirit of the age and
from that of Goethe. The cold reception it met with shattered at a blow
the dream of Wolfgang's life; henceforth he realized that to the world
he was interesting mainly as "Goethe's grandson," that anything he might
achieve would be measured by that terrible standard, and he hated the
legacy of his name.
The next five years he spent in Italy and at Vienna, tormented by facial
neuralgia. Returning to Weimar in 1850, he was made a chamberlain by the
grand-duke, and in 1852, his health being now somewhat restored, he
entered the Prussian diplomatic service and went as attache to Rome. The
fruit of his long years of illness was a slender volume of lyrics,
_Gedichte_ (Stuttgart and Tubingen, 1851), good in form, but seldom
inspired, and showing occasionally the influence of a morbid sensuality.
In 1854 he was appointed secretary of legation; but the aggressive
ultramontanism of the Curia became increasingly intolerable to his
overwrought nature, and in 1856 he was transferred, at his own request,
as secretary of legation to Dresden. This post he resigned in 1859, in
which year he was raised to the rank of _Freiherr_ (baron). In 1866 he
received the title of councillor of legation; but he never again
occupied any diplomatic post.
The rest of his life he devoted to historical research, ultimately
selecting as his special subject the Italian libraries up to the year
1500. The outcome of all his labours was, however, only the first part
of _Studies and Researches in the Times and Life of Cardinal Bessarion_,
embracing the period of the council of Florence (privately printed at
Jena, 1871), a catalogue of the MSS. in the monastery of Sancta Justina
at Padua (Jena, 1873), and a mass of undigested material, which he
ultimately bequeathed 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 sons in the Goethehaus.
So long as she lived, her small salon in the attic storey of the great
house was a centre of attraction for many of the most illustrious
personages in Europe. But after her death in 1872 the two brothers lived
in almost complete isolation. The few old friends, including the
grand-duke Charles Alexander, who continued regularly to visit the
house, were entertained with kindly hospitality by Baron Walther;
Wolfgang refused to be drawn from his isolation even by the advent of
royalty. "Tell the empress," he cried on one occasion, "that I am not a
wild beast to be stared at!" In 1879, his increasing illness
necessitating the constant presence of an attendant, he went to live at
Leipzig, where he died.
Goethe's grandsons have been so repeatedly accused of having displayed a
dog-in-the-manger temper in closing the Goethehaus to the public and
the Goethe archives to research, that the charge has almost universally
come to be regarded as proven. It is true that the house was closed and
access to the archives only very sparingly allowed until Baron Walther's
death in 1885. But the reason for this was not, as Herr Max Hecker
rather absurdly suggests, Wolfgang's jealousy of his grandfather's
oppressive fame, but one far more simple and natural. From one cause or
another, principally Ottilie von Goethe's extravagance, the family was
in very straitened circumstances; and the brothers, being thoroughly
unbusinesslike, believed themselves to be poorer than they really
were.[1] They closed the Goethehaus and the archives, because to have
opened them would have needed an army of attendants.[2] If they deserve
any blame it is for the pride, natural to their rank and their
generation, which prevented them from charging an entrance fee, an
expedient which would not only have made it possible for them to give
access to the house and collections, but would have enabled them to save
the fabric from falling into the lamentable state of disrepair in which
it was found after their death. In any case, the accusation is
ungenerous. With an almost exaggerated _Pietat_ Goethe's descendants
preserved his house untouched, at great inconvenience to themselves, and
left it, with all its treasures intact, to the nation. Had they been the
selfish misers they are sometimes painted, they could have realized a
fortune by selling its contents.
_Wolf Goethe_ (Weimar, 1889) is a sympathetic appreciation by Otto
Mejer, formerly president of the Lutheran consistory in Hanover. See
also Jenny v. Gerstenbergk, _Ottilie von Goethe und ihre Sohne Walther
und Wolf_ (Stuttgart, 1901), and the article on Maximilian Wolfgang
von Goethe by Max F. Hecker in _Allgem. deutsche Biographie_, Bd. 49,
_Nachtrage_ (Leipzig, 1904). (W. A. P.)