Although rarely staged in its entirety, it is the play with the largest audience numbers on German-language stages. Faust is considered by many to be Goethe's magnum opus and the greatest work of German literature. The earliest forms of the work, known as the Urfaust , were developed between and ; however, the details of that development are not entirely clear. Urfaust has twenty-two scenes, one in prose, two largely prose and the remaining 1, lines in rhymed verse. The manuscript is lost, but a copy was discovered in The first appearance of the work in print was Faust, a Fragment , published in
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His works include: four novels; epic and lyric poetry ; prose and verse dramas; memoirs; an autobiography; literary and aesthetic criticism ; and treatises on botany , anatomy , and colour. In addition, numerous literary and scientific fragments, more than 10, letters, and nearly 3, drawings by him have survived. He is considered the greatest German literary figure of the modern era. A literary celebrity by the age of 25, Goethe was ennobled by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar , Karl August , in after taking up residence in Weimar in November following the success of his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther He was an early participant in the Sturm und Drang literary movement.
During his first ten years in Weimar, Goethe became a member of the Duke's privy council , sat on the war and highway commissions, oversaw the reopening of silver mines in nearby Ilmenau , and implemented a series of administrative reforms at the University of Jena. He also contributed to the planning of Weimar's botanical park and the rebuilding of its Ducal Palace.
Goethe's first major scientific work, the Metamorphosis of Plants , was published after he returned from a tour of Italy. In he was made managing director of the theatre at Weimar, and in he began a friendship with the dramatist , historian, and philosopher Friedrich Schiller , whose plays he premiered until Schiller's death in During this period Goethe published his second novel, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship ; the verse epic Hermann and Dorothea , and, in , the first part of his most celebrated drama, Faust.
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer named Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship one of the four greatest novels ever written,  [b] while the American philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson selected Goethe as one of six "representative men" in his work of the same name along with Plato , Emanuel Swedenborg , Montaigne , Napoleon , and Shakespeare. Goethe's comments and observations form the basis of several biographical works, notably Johann Peter Eckermann 's Conversations with Goethe Though he had studied law in Leipzig and had been appointed Imperial Councillor, he was not involved in the city's official affairs.
His father and private tutors gave Goethe lessons in all the common subjects of their time, especially languages Latin , Greek , French, Italian, English and Hebrew. Goethe also received lessons in dancing, riding and fencing. Johann Caspar, feeling frustrated in his own ambitions, was determined that his children should have all those advantages that he had not. Although Goethe's great passion was drawing, he quickly became interested in literature; Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Homer were among his early favorites.
He had a lively devotion to theater as well and was greatly fascinated by puppet shows that were annually arranged in his home; this is a recurrent theme in his literary work Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.
He also took great pleasure in reading works on history and religion. He writes about this period:. I had from childhood the singular habit of always learning by heart the beginnings of books, and the divisions of a work, first of the five books of Moses , and then of the ' Aeneid ' and Ovid 's 'Metamorphoses'.
If an ever busy imagination, of which that tale may bear witness, led me hither and thither, if the medley of fable and history, mythology and religion, threatened to bewilder me, I readily fled to those oriental regions, plunged into the first books of Moses, and there, amid the scattered shepherd tribes, found myself at once in the greatest solitude and the greatest society. Goethe became also acquainted with Frankfurt actors. Goethe studied law at Leipzig University from to In , he anonymously released Annette , his first collection of poems.
His uncritical admiration for many contemporary poets vanished as he became interested in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Christoph Martin Wieland. Already at this time, Goethe wrote a good deal, but he threw away nearly all of these works, except for the comedy Die Mitschuldigen.
The restaurant Auerbachs Keller and its legend of Faust's barrel ride impressed him so much that Auerbachs Keller became the only real place in his closet drama Faust Part One.
As his studies did not progress, Goethe was forced to return to Frankfurt at the close of August Goethe became severely ill in Frankfurt. During the year and a half that followed, because of several relapses, the relationship with his father worsened. During convalescence, Goethe was nursed by his mother and sister. In Alsace , Goethe blossomed. No other landscape has he described as affectionately as the warm, wide Rhine area. The two became close friends, and crucially to Goethe's intellectual development, Herder kindled his interest in Shakespeare , Ossian and in the notion of Volkspoesie folk poetry.
On 14 October Goethe held a gathering in his parental home in honour of the first German "Shakespeare Day". His first acquaintance with Shakespeare's works is described as his personal awakening in literature.
On a trip to the village Sessenheim , Goethe fell in love with Friederike Brion , in October ,   but, after ten months, terminated the relationship in August At the end of August , Goethe acquired the academic degree of the Lizenziat Licentia docendi in Frankfurt and established a small legal practice.
Although in his academic work he had expressed the ambition to make jurisprudence progressively more humane, his inexperience led him to proceed too vigorously in his first cases, and he was reprimanded and lost further ones.
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. Goethe also pursued literary plans again; this time, his father did not have anything against it, and even helped. Goethe obtained a copy of the biography of a noble highwayman from the German Peasants' War. In a couple of weeks the biography was reworked into a colourful drama.
Goethe could not subsist on being one of the editors of a literary periodical published by Schlosser and Merck. In May he once more began the practice of law at Wetzlar. In he wrote the book which would bring him worldwide fame, The Sorrows of Young Werther. In later years Goethe would bypass this problem by periodically authorizing "new, revised" editions of his Complete Works. Goethe thus went to live in Weimar , where he remained for the rest of his life and where, over the course of many years, he held a succession of offices, becoming the Duke's friend and chief adviser.
In , Goethe formed a close relationship to Charlotte von Stein , an older, married woman. The intimate bond with von Stein lasted for ten years, after which Goethe abruptly left for Italy without giving his companion any notice.
She was emotionally distraught at the time, but they were eventually reconciled. Goethe, aside from official duties, was also a friend and confidant to the Duke, and participated fully in the activities of the court.
For Goethe, his first ten years at Weimar could well be described as a garnering of a degree and range of experience which perhaps could be achieved in no other way. In , when the chancellor of the Duchy's Exchequer left his office, Goethe agreed to act in his place for two and a half years; this post virtually made him prime minister and the principal representative of the Duchy. The author W. Goethe's journey to the Italian peninsula and Sicily from to was of great significance in his aesthetic and philosophical development.
His father had made a similar journey during his own youth, and his example was a major motivating factor for Goethe to make the trip. More importantly, however, the work of Johann Joachim Winckelmann had provoked a general renewed interest in the classical art of ancient Greece and Rome. Thus Goethe's journey had something of the nature of a pilgrimage to it. During the course of his trip Goethe met and befriended the artists Angelica Kauffman and Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein , as well as encountering such notable characters as Lady Hamilton and Alessandro Cagliostro see Affair of the Diamond Necklace.
He also journeyed to Sicily during this time, and wrote intriguingly that "To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is to not have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything. Winckelmann had not recognized the distinctness of the two styles. Goethe's diaries of this period form the basis of the non-fiction Italian Journey.
Italian Journey only covers the first year of Goethe's visit. The remaining year is largely undocumented, aside from the fact that he spent much of it in Venice.
This "gap in the record" has been the source of much speculation over the years. In the decades which immediately followed its publication in , Italian Journey inspired countless German youths to follow Goethe's example. This is pictured, somewhat satirically, in George Eliot 's Middlemarch. Again during the Siege of Mainz he assisted Carl August as a military observer.
His written account of these events can be found within his Complete Works. In , Friedrich Schiller wrote to Goethe offering friendship; they had previously had only a mutually wary relationship ever since first becoming acquainted in This collaborative friendship lasted until Schiller's death in Vulpius , and their son Julius August Walter von Goethe. On 13 October, Napoleon 's army invaded the town.
The French "spoon guards", the least disciplined soldiers, occupied Goethe's house:. The 'spoon guards' had broken in, they had drunk wine, made a great uproar and called for the master of the house. Goethe's secretary Riemer reports: 'Although already undressed and wearing only his wide nightgown His dignified figure, commanding respect, and his spiritual mien seemed to impress even them.
Late at night they burst into his bedroom with drawn bayonets. Goethe was petrified, Christiane raised a lot of noise and even tangled with them, other people who had taken refuge in Goethe's house rushed in, and so the marauders eventually withdrew again.
It was Christiane who commanded and organized the defense of the house on the Frauenplan. The barricading of the kitchen and the cellar against the wild pillaging soldiery was her work. Goethe noted in his diary: "Fires, rapine, a frightful night Preservation of the house through steadfastness and luck.
They had already had several children together by this time, including their son, Julius August Walter von Goethe — , whose wife, Ottilie von Pogwisch — , cared for the elder Goethe until his death in Christiane von Goethe died in Johann reflected, "There is nothing more charming to see than a mother with her child in her arms, and there is nothing more venerable than a mother among a number of her children.
After , Goethe devoted his endeavours primarily to literature. By , Goethe was on amiable terms with Kaspar Maria von Sternberg. In , having recovered from a near fatal heart illness, the year-old Goethe fell in love with the teenaged Ulrike von Levetzow whom he wanted to marry, but because of the opposition of her mother he never proposed.
Their last meeting in Carlsbad on 5 September inspired him to the famous Marienbad Elegy which he considered one of his finest works. Goethe, now in his seventies, was greatly impressed by the child, leading to perhaps the earliest confirmed comparison with Mozart in the following conversation between Goethe and Zelter:.
Mendelssohn was invited to meet Goethe on several later occasions,  and set a number of Goethe's poems to music. In , Goethe died in Weimar of apparent heart failure.
His last words, according to his doctor Carl Vogel, were, Mehr Licht! More light! Eckermann closes his famous work, Conversations with Goethe , with this passage:.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
His works include: four novels; epic and lyric poetry ; prose and verse dramas; memoirs; an autobiography; literary and aesthetic criticism ; and treatises on botany , anatomy , and colour. In addition, numerous literary and scientific fragments, more than 10, letters, and nearly 3, drawings by him have survived. He is considered the greatest German literary figure of the modern era. A literary celebrity by the age of 25, Goethe was ennobled by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar , Karl August , in after taking up residence in Weimar in November following the success of his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther
Fausto by Goethe
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Preliminaries Dedication, Prelude, Prologue. Part I of the work outlines a pact Faust makes with the devil, Mephistopheles, and encompasses the tragedy of Gretchen, whom Faust seduces. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born in Frankfurt am Main in In he published his first major work, the self-revelatory novel The Sorrows of Young Werther , in which he created the prototype of the Romantic hero, and instigated a European fashion. He consequently became a leading figure in the Sturm und Drang movement, which celebrated a Promethean restlessness of spirit as opposed to the rationalism of the Enlightenment.