Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born in Frankfurt, the first child of a lawyer Johann Caspar Goethe, and Katherine Elisabeth Textor, the daughter of the mayor of Frankfurt. Goethe had a comfortable childhood and he was greatly influenced by his mother, who encouraged his literary aspirations. After troubles at school, he received at home an exceptionally wide education. At the age of 16, Goethe began to study law at Leipzig University (1765-68), and he also studied drawing with Adam Oeser. An unhappy love affair inspired Goethe’s first play, The Lover’s Caprice (1767). After a period of illness, Goethe resumed his studies in Strasbourg (1770-71). Goethe practised law in Frankfurt (1771-72) and Wetzlar (1772). He contributed to Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen (1772-73), and in 1774 he published his first novel, self-revelatory Die Leiden Des Jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther), in which he created the prototype of the Romantic hero. The novel, written in the form of a series of letters, depicted the hopeless affair of a young man, Werther, with the beautiful Charlotte.
Goethe’s youth was emotionally hectic to the point that he sometimes feared for his reason. He was recognized as a leading figure in the Sturm und Drang, which celebrated the energetic Promethean restlessness of spirit as opposed to the ideal of calm rationalism of the Enlightenment. Goethe’s poem ‘Prometheus’, with its insistence that man must believe not in gods but in himself, might be seen as a motto for the whole movement. After a relaxing trip to Switzerland, Goethe made a decisive break with his past. In 1775 he was welcomed by Duke Karl August into the small court of Weimar, where he worked in several governmental offices.
In Weimar Goethe did not have much time to publish fiction. He was a council member and member of the war commission, director of roads and services, and managed the financial affairs of the court. Also Goethe’s scientific researches were wide. He discovered the human intermaxilarry bone (1784), and formulated a vertebral theory of the skull.
Eventually Goethe was released from day-to-day governmental duties to concentrate on writing, although he was still general supervisor for arts and sciences, and director of the court theatres.
In 1786-88 Goethe made a journey to Italy. He drew statues and ruins, collected antique and botanical samples, and was shocked by the primitive power of an ancient Greek temple— Renaissance art did not interest him. The journey ended Goethe’s celibacy and inspired his play Iphigenie Auf Tauris, and Romishe Elegien, sensuous poems relating partly to Christiane. The ancient monuments he saw in Italy significantly influenced his growing commitment to a classical view of art. “Three things are to be looked to in a building,” Goethe later wrote in Elective Affinities (1808), “that it stands on the right spot; that it be securely founded; that it be successfully executed.”
In the 1790s Goethe contributed to Friedrich von Schiller´s journal Die Horen, published Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship) in 1795-96, and continued his writings on the ideals of arts and literature in his own journal Propylaen. Wilhelm Meister’s story had preoccupied the author for many years.
During the French Revolution Goethe reported in letters— sometimes written in the middle of cannon fire—to his family his inconveniences, complaining that he was forced to leave his home and dear garden after the French army attacked Prussia. He also saw killings and looted villages. Although Goethe supported freedom and progress, he wanted to preserve the bourgeois or his artistic-individualistic way of life.
Faust is an alchemical drama from beginning to end, claims C.G. Jung. Goethe worked for most of his life on this masterwork. He started to compose Faust about the age of twenty-three, and finished the second part in 1832, just before his death.
In the first part, published in 1808, Faust seduces and loses Margaret, an innocent girl, who is condemned to death for murdering her illegitimate child by Faust.
In the philosophical second part Faust marries Helen of Troy and starts to create an ideal community.
From 1791 to 1817 Goethe was the director of the court theatres. He advised Duke Carl August on mining and Jena University, which for a short time attracted the most prominent figures in German philosophy, including Hegel and Fichte. In 1812 Goethe met the famous composer Ludwig van Beethoven in Teplitz. Beethoven had admired Goethe already in his youth, although he considered Goethe’s attitude toward the nobility too servile. Beethoven composed several music pieces based on the author’s texts.
Goethe remained creative during his last period. He edited Kunst and Altertum (1816-32) and Zur Naturwissenschaft (1817-24), wrote his autobiography, Poetry and Truth (1811-1833), and completed the novel Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1821-9). Interested in visual arts throughout his life, Goethe wrote a large volume on the theory of color, which he considered one of his major achievements. In Zur Farbenlehre (1810) Goethe rejected mathematical approach in the treatment of colour, and argued that light, shade and colour are associated with the emotional experience.
At the age of 74 Goethe fell in love with the 19-year old Ulrike von Levetzow. He followed her with high hopes from Marienbad to Karlsbad, and then returned disappointed to Weimar. There he wrote The Marienbad elegy, the most personal poem of his later years. Goethe died on March 22, 1832.
