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"I call architecture frozen music." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The German poet, dramatist, novelist, and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), who embraced many fields of human endeavor, ranks as the greatest of all German poets. Of all modern men of genius, Goethe is the most universal.

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"Faust" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany.

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Good and Evil in Goethe's Faust:

In Faust Goethe shows many of his opinions about good, evil, and religion. Goethe uses characters like The Lord and Gretchen in the early part of the play to set examples of goodness. Goethe uses characters like Mephistopheles to stand for evil. Throughout the play Goethe also uses examples of the church to show how he feels the church works.

The concept of good for Goethe is that everyone has the ability to be good and that errors in judgment are what make people bad but if a person keeps striving these mistakes will bring them closer to righteousness. As long as a person continues to keep moving and doing things they will most likely achieve righteousness. This is shown in the bet between Faust and Mephistopheles. Faust says that if at any time he says, "Linger a while! Thou art so fair!" that will be when Faust dies and serves Mephistopheles. This shows that if Faust were to stop wanting to do anything it would be a horrible sin. The Lord which many perceive to stand for God stands for the perfection that Faust is trying to accomplish with his life. Gretchen in the early part of the play stands for perfection because she is inexperienced and knows nothing else until Faust starts to seduce her.

The concept of bad for Goethe can be seen most in the character of Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles is believed to stand for the devil. When he first introduces himself he describes himself as "a part of that Power which always wills evil, always procures good.....the Spirit which always denies." Mephistopheles actions such as talking Faust into taking advantage of Gretchen and then telling him to leave her are seen as evil actions. The fact that Mephistopheles spends time with witches which most people see as evil shows that he is also evil. Goethe believes that all people sin sometimes and God forgives us. This is shown when Gretchen is in prison and after all the sin she has done a voice from heaven grants her salvation. Even though she did sin, most of her sin was because of inexperience and she was not purposely sinning.

Goethe feels that the church and religion are both useless. When Faust leaves Gretchen the first jewels, her mother takes them to the church. The church takes them saying that they are trying to help, but this can be seen as the church just trying to get money out of them. Goethe's opinion can be seen when Mephistopheles says:

The Church has an excellent appetite

She has swallowed whole countries and the question

Has never risen of indigestion

Only the Church can take

Ill-gotten goods without stomach-ache!

When Gretchen is in the church and being taunted by the Evil Spirit and faints shows more of Goethe's feelings. Religion is supposed to help you through your problems and make you feel better. In Gretchen's case religion is actually hurting her more because she feels so bad that she went against her beliefs and she didn't know anything else. The church is also supposed to be forgiving but Gretchen and other girls like her are looked down on by others in the community. In effect both the church and religion are supposed to help but neither do. Goethe's opinions are present in many scenes throughout Faust. Goethe gives many examples of good and evil for us to compare. Mephistopheles, Gretchen, and the witches all stand for Goethe's opinions on different subjects. He also shows that he doesn't trust the church or religion. Throughout the play he also shows that you have to know some evil in order to know good.

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Goethe's Faust - A Tragedy:

Webster's Dictionary says that a tragedy is a lamentable, dreadful, or fatal event or affair, or a disaster. This word and the story Faust, by Goethe, go together very well due to the amount of calamities within the tale. For this reason the subtitle "A Tragedy" is appropriate. It is befitting because of Faust's alliance with the Devil, his actions along with the Devil and the fate of two of the main characters at the end of the story. Faust: A Tragedy is very deserving of the subtitle "A Tragedy".

It was definitely a tragedy that Faust allied himself with Mephisto. Whenever a person strays from the positive path of the Lord to the side of the Devil it is definitely something very negative. For ages people have been using the phrase, "he sold his soul to the Devil", with no positive connotation. Of course when this phrase was used it was just to say that that person was evil, not that they actually let Satan purchase their soul. That would be ridiculous, correct? Well that is exactly what happened in Faust's case. Due to his own flaw of not being satisfied with life itself, he strayed from the Lord and traded his soul for a higher form of entertainment. "Thinking's done with, for ever so long Learning and knowledge have sickened me....Bring on your miracles..." It is tragic when someone feels that they understand so much, or try to ignore so much to the point where they think that they should give their soul away with no fear of eternal damnation. Faust believes or tries to believe that there is no after life and that he can just trade away his life to the most evil being in existence with no repercussions. Falling from God and making the Devil his partner is something that deserves the title "a tragedy".

While working with the Devil Faust did a number of evil things, some being quite tragic. It was already bad enough that Faust decided to play games with Mephistopheles, but it was worse when he decided he wanted to draw someone else into his sick deal. Faust, being overwhelmed with lust, felt that he needed to seduce and corrupt a young girl. "Get me that, do you hear, you must!" This is even worse when you consider that it was inevitable that he would succeed with the aid of Satan. He tricked her with stolen jewels and then tore her virginity, impregnating her with the mark of scandal and sin. It is disastrous when a young, pure-hearted, religious girl is seduced by a lusty man and his hellish companion. Faust even went a step further to make this young lady murder her mother in the pursuit of sexual relations. In most stories a tragic ending is one that involves a death, so with the death of Margarete's mother this is obviously a tragedy. Faust and Mephisto further fulfill the traditional definition of a literary tragedy by murdering Margarete's brother in cold blood. The companionship of Faust and Satan lead to many tragic actions.

The end of Faust was a tragedy in a number of ways. Faust finds that his lover is in jail and is to be hung for having sex before marriage. When he goes to free her he also finds that her feelings for him are different and not as strong as they used to be. "I'm afraid of you, Heinrich, afraid!" Since all Faust could think about for awhile was his love, Margarete, this is a devastating change for him. Margarete also informs Faust that she drowned their child. How could that not be tragic? She also refuses to escape the prison with Faust and she and Faust have to accept that she is going to be killed. One would think that after all of the trouble that Mephistopheles had caused Faust, that Faust would leave him. That is what makes Faust once again leaving with the Lord of the Flies so tragic. The end of Faust: A Tragedy is tragic from a literary aspect and a religious aspect.

Goethe makes sure that the subtitle "A Tragedy" is one that is correctly assigned. Faust is a tragedy in the traditional literary way and by way of the definition given in the dictionary. The term tragedy is fulfilled by Faust's contract with Satan, his behavior while with Satan, and by the fate of Faust and his lover. A tragedy? Yes, and what a tragedy it is.

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Goethe's Faust - Triumph of Faust:

In the beginning of Goethe's Faust, a bet is made between God and Mephistopheles, a character that some consider to be the Devil. Mephistopheles says that Faust, the doctor, will fall and God says in lines 15-16, "If today he's still confused, a soul astray, my light shall lead him into a true way." Soon Mephistopheles has to do anything for Faust if Faust, in return, gives Mephisto his soul. Although Faust, throughout the play, is irritated with Mephistopheles, he feels like it is also necessary to have around because he needs him to have a fulfilling life. Faust discovers in the end that he doesn't want to be a bad guy and therefore triumphs over Mephistopheles and God wins the bet.

When the pact is first on, Faust doesn't seem to care about his soul or his life. He is Mephisto's sidekick for lack of anything better to do. In lines 1676-1678, Faust says, "If you pull this world down over my ears...who cares?" Faust sees himself as better than God, so therefore not worried about his welfare. In the scene, "Night", Faust even tried to kill himself. As the twosome begin hanging out together, Faust seems bored with all that Mephistopheles shows him. In lines 2377-2383 Faust says, "Are you telling me that I'll learn to be a new man stumbling around in this lunatic confusion?...If you can do no better, the outlook is black for me, the hopes I nursed are already dead."

Faust suddenly starts taking interest when he lays eyes on Gretchen, a beautiful, poor, good, and modest young woman. Although Mephistopheles doesn't approve of pursuing the girl, he must do what Faust orders him to or he'll lose Faust's soul. So, Mephisto does what Faust says, although reluctantly. "Aren't you fed up with it by now, this mooning about? How can it still amuse you? You do it for a while, all right; but enough's enough, on to the new!" Mephisto says in lines 3310-3313. Throughout the rest of the play, Mephisto tries to talk Faust out of some ideas, but he always gives into him, so Faust doesn't call off the pact, and Mephistopheles doesn't lose his bet with God.

In "An Overcast Day, A Field" Faust finds out that he got Gretchen pregnant, and that she's in jail. He's fed up with Mephistopheles for not telling him, Faust says in lines 4493-4496, "A condemned criminal, shut up in a dungeon and suffering horrible torments, the poor unfortunate child! It's come to this! And not a word about it breathed to me, you treacherous, odious spirit!" He makes Mephistopheles take him to Gretchen so he can save her. Faust has developed morals! What a surprise! He's learned over the time he has spent with Mephistopheles that he doesn't want to be a jerk. Part of Faust's conversion from evil to good could be due to Gretchen having a good impact on him.

I believe Faust will triumph in the end because he realizes that Mephistopheles is only messing everything up for him, and realize that having a fulfilling life isn't the same as what he thought it was in the beginning. At first he was only thinking of himself and later on he was worried about others and his impact on others. Since he turns out being a pretty good guy when he goes to save Gretchen, he could even go to Heaven for it. Overall, Faust benefited from his relationship with Mephistopheles because it made him a better person than he was in the beginning.

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Faust: Mocking Religion:

The play Faust by Goethe is subtitled a tragedy. There's nothing in the play like Romeo and Juliet. So why would it be subtitled a tragedy? Well I don't know who or why they call it a tragedy, but I know why I would call it a tragedy. Some things in the play are very tragic: for example the mocking of religion (lines 290-295) the pregnancy of the girl, the loss of faith (line 388) the intelligent Faust losing hope (line 381) and though we didn't read this, the fact that Faust goes to Heaven after all he died (the very end of the play)

Throughout this play religion is constantly mocked. The Devil and God are pretty buddy buddy. I mean they make bets, they have casual conversation (lines 275-302) They are just kind of friends. I am not the most religious person, but I know that the Devil and God are not friends. They do not talk, make bets, or hang out together. An obvious mocking right there. Also it seems that the powerful Devil is not powerful at all. He is repeatedly outsmarted by a mere mortal (line 2715) and has many limitation. If you grow up going to church and being taught religion you are under the impression that the Devil is so powerful, always tempting us mortals and finally buying our souls. God and the Devil are made fun of by showing how much little power they have. God over the Devil and the devil over mortals.

The girl, Grethen, getting pregnant is a tragedy for the simple fact that she and Faust are in love and would probably be in love for ever and ever had it not been for the Devil. Faust loves this girl and would love to be with her forever, but the Devil says that Faust can sleep with any girl without staying with her. So the Devil convinces Faust to tarnish this innocent girl. He sleeps with her getting her pregnant and thus sending her to jail (it is a crime back then for a woman to get pregnant without being married) Faust knows that the women he loves is in jail, possibly forever and he wants to help, but the Devil convinces him otherwise.

Faust's loss of faith is another issue in this play that I feel was a tragedy. Faust is very smart (lines 362-395) and somewhat religious, but he just gives up on everything including God. Now some would say that a loss of faith is not very tragic, but I would have to strongly disagree. Everyone must have faith in something. Faith brings on hope and as we can see Faust lost his faith (among other things) and lost the hope of ever being happy. When someone as smart as Faust loses hope in something it can not be labeled anything but tragic. Faust has all those degrees (lines 362-370) all those years of schooling and yet he feels that there is no hope of him ever finding happiness or love. How tragic can that be, someone with so much to live for feels that he has nothing to live for. I think that that is just plain sad. The most tragic part of this whole play would have to be Faust going to Heaven. Again I think this is religion being mocked in some sort of way, but look at all the things Faust did throughout the play. First he lost his faith in God. Then he basically sold his soul to the Devil, who is supposed to be like God's enemy. Then he got that girl pregnant, let her go to jail and felt little or no remorse about it. After all these, not sins, but all these acts that totally deify God he is allowed into God's kingdom. A complete mockery of religion and tragic ending.

The play Faust is not labeled a tragedy, but it is subtitled as so for reasons not specific. I, though, have my own specific reasons. First the play totally mocks and makes fun of religion and of religious people. Second a totally innocent girl is used and then left in jail. Third a man with so much to live for and offer the world, feels there is no longer a need to continue living. And fourth the complete loss of faith and religious beliefs by Faust. I don not know who subtitled this a tragedy or why they did, but I believe it is a tragedy.

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Commentary Against Absurdity in Faust:

Goethe's "Faust" could be called a comedy as readily as it is subtitled "A Tragedy." In the course of the play, the author finds comic or ironic ways to either mock or punish religionists, atheists, demons, and deities. Despite the obvious differences between these, Goethe unites them all by the common threads of ego and ridiculousness. Thus, the play as a whole becomes more of a commentary against absurdity than against religion.

The first victims of satire in Faust are Satan and God, who appear in somewhat small-scale form in an early scene that parallels the Book of Job. In Goethe's Heaven reigns "The Lord," to whom a trio of archangels ascribe creation. Enter Mephistopheles, and all semblance of seriousness is lost. Introduced as a demon, and arguably THE Devil, he is witty, cynical, and in general a caricature of what religionists throughout the ages have labeled pure evil. The Lord proceeds to give Mephistopheles permission to go to his "good servant" Faust, and try to tempt him from goodness' path. The irony here is that Faust is not a good servant, but instead attempts to rival the power of the Lord through alchemy and witchcraft. In other words, he is not the pious Job. With this scene, Goethe has undermined the natures of good, evil, and a familiar biblical protagonist: God is transformed into a faintly amused and largely absent figure; the Devil into a court jester; and Job into an irreligious self-seeker.

Goethe's demonstration of his take on religious hypocrisy is not obvious in the case of Gretchen, Faust's love interest and eventually his victim. When Faust's seemingly sincere love leaves her pregnant with his child, Gretchen is transformed in the eyes of the other characters from a chaste virgin to an unsanctified whore. At one point, when her predicament is still secret, Gretchen and her friend Lieschen discuss the misfortune of another girl, who was seduced by a man, impregnated, and abandoned by him. While Lieschen is filled with a self-righteous scorn in the matter, Gretchen is secretly frightened. She privately admits that she used to look down on such "sinners" in her own religious piety, but now despairs her pride, as she has likewise fallen from grace. Soon after her conversation with Lieschen, Gretchen's affair with Faust becomes common knowledge. One might wonder if Lieschen, in her arrogance, will enjoy a similar future.

The culmination of Goethe's mockery takes place in a scene he calls "Walpurgis Night." Here unholy beings of all sorts congregate to celebrate the Devil. It is strange that this bizarre assortment of diabolical pariahs take their rites more seriously than the distracted crowds who were out on Easter Sunday in an earlier scene. While the Lord was not among those Christians as they did everything but praise him, Mephistopheles wanders freely in the midst of his witches and warlocks, who happily pay their respects. The scene is a chastisement of the nature of God and his so-called believers.

I feel that "Faust" is a statement about the futility of pretending to practice a faith - any faith - that is futile to begin with. God and the Devil may exist, but to Goethe they remain figures as comic as those who pay them lip service. To take anything about their natures seriously, (as Gretchen did), without a will strong enough to sustain the fervor (as Gretchen's was), is dangerous and fruitless. Thus, true piety is indirectly praised, and the consequence of an effort that is too weak is shown.

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Goethe biography:

   

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German writer. George Eliot called him "Germany's greatest man of letters… and the last true polymath to walk the earth." Goethe's works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, humanism, and science. Goethe's magnum opus, lauded as one of the peaks of world literature, is the two-part drama Faust. Goethe's other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Goethe was one of the key figures of German literature and the movement of Weimar Classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; this movement coincides with Enlightenment, Sentimentality (Empfindsamkeit), Sturm und Drang, and Romanticism. The author of the scientific text Theory of Colours, he influenced Darwin with his focus on plant morphology. He also long served as the Privy Councilor ("Geheimrat") of the duchy of Weimar.

Goethe is the originator of the concept of Weltliteratur ("world literature"), having taken great interest in the literatures of England, France, Italy, classical Greece, Persia, Arabic literature, amongst others. His influence on German philosophy is virtually immeasurable, having major impact especially on the generation of Hegel and Schelling, although Goethe himself expressly and decidedly refrained from practicing philosophy in the rarefied sense.

Goethe's influence spread across Europe, and for the next century his works were a major source of inspiration in music, drama, poetry and philosophy. Goethe is considered by many to be the most important writer in the German language and one of the most important thinkers in Western culture as well. Early in his career, however, he wondered whether painting might not be his true vocation; late in his life, he expressed the expectation that he would ultimately be remembered above all for his work in colour.

Early life

Goethe's father, Johann Caspar Goethe (Frankfurt-am-Main, Hessen, 29 July 1710 – Frankfurt-am-Main, Hessen, 25 May 1782), lived with his family in a large house in Frankfurt am Main, then an Imperial Free City of the Holy Roman Empire. Goethe's mother, Catharina Elisabeth Textor (Frankfurt-am-Main, Hessen, 19 February 1731 – Frankfurt-am-Main, Hessen, 15 September 1808), the daughter of the Mayor of Frankfurt Johann Wolfgang Textor (Frankfurt-am-Main, Hessen, 11 December 1693 – Frankfurt-am-Main, Hessen, 6 February 1771) and wife (married at Wetzlar, 2 February 1726) Anna Margaretha Lindheimer (Wetzlar, 23 July 1711 – Frankfurt-am-Main, Hessen, 18 April 1783, a descendant of Lucas Cranach the Elder and Henry III, Landgrave of Hesse-Marburg), married 38-year-old Johann Caspar when she was only 17 at Frankfurt am Main on 20 August 1748. All their children, except for Goethe and his sister, Cornelia Friederike Christiana, who was born in 1750, died at an early age.

Johann Caspar and private tutors gave Goethe lessons in all the common subjects of that time, especially languages (Latin, Greek, French and English). Goethe also received lessons in dancing, riding and fencing. Johann Caspar was the type of father who, feeling frustrated in his own ambitions by what he saw as a deficiency of educational advantages, was determined that his children would have all those advantages which he had not had. Goethe had a persistent dislike of the church, characterizing its history as a "hotchpotch of mistakes and violence" (Mischmasch von Irrtum und Gewalt). His great passion was drawing. Goethe quickly became interested in literature; Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Homer were among his early favourites. He had a lively devotion to theatre as well and was greatly fascinated by puppet shows that were annually arranged in his home; a familiar theme in Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.

Legal career

Goethe studied law in Leipzig from 1765 to 1768. Learning age-old judicial rules by heart was something he strongly detested. He preferred to attend the poetry lessons of Christian Fürchtegott Gellert. In Leipzig, Goethe fell in love with Käthchen Schönkopf and wrote cheerful verses about her in the Rococo genre. In 1770, he anonymously released Annette, his first collection of poems. His uncritical admiration for many contemporary poets vanished as he became interested in Lessing and Wieland. Already at this time, Goethe wrote 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 1525 barrel ride impressed him so much that Auerbachs Keller became the only real place in his closet drama Faust Part One. Because his studies did not progress, Goethe was forced to return to Frankfurt at the close of August 1768.

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

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

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

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

Goethe could not subsist on being one of the editors of a literary periodical (published by Schlosser and Merck). In May 1772 he once more began the practice of law at Wetzlar. In 1774 Goethe wrote the book which would bring him world-wide fame, The Sorrows of Young Werther. Despite the immense success of Werther, it did not bring Goethe much financial gain — copyright law at the time being essentially nonexistent. (In later years Goethe would bypass this problem by periodically authorizing "new, revised" editions of his Complete Works.)

Early years in Weimar

In 1775 Goethe was invited, on the strength of his fame as the author of The Sorrows of Young Werther, to the court of Carl August, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. (The Duke at the time was 18 years of age, to Goethe's 26.) Goethe thus went to live in Weimar where he remained throughout the rest of his life, and where, over the course of many years, he held a succession of offices; becoming the Duke's chief adviser.

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. Goethe was ennobled in 1782 (this being indicated by the "von" in his name).

Italy

Goethe's journey to the Italian peninsula from 1786 to 1788 was of great significance in his æsthetical 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 Kauffmann 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." While in Sicily, Goethe encountered, for the first time genuine Greek (as opposed to Roman) architecture, and was quite startled by its relative simplicity. 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 1816 Italian Journey inspired countless German youths to follow Goethe's example. This is pictured, somewhat satirically, in George Elliot's Middlemarch.

Weimar

In late 1792, Goethe took part in the battle of Valmy against revolutionary France, assisting Duke Carl August of Saxe-Weimar during the failed invasion of France. 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 1794 Friedrich Schiller wrote to Goethe offering friendship; they had previously had only a mutually wary relationship ever since first becoming acquainted in 1788. This collaborative friendship lasted until Schiller's death in 1805.

In 1806, Goethe was living in Weimar with his mistress Christiane Vulpius, the sister of Christian A. Vulpius, and their son Karl August. On October 13, 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 … he descended the stairs towards them and inquired what they wanted from him … . His dignified figure, commanding respect, and his spiritual mien seemed to impress even them.' But it was not to last long. 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." The luck was Goethe's, the steadfastness was displayed by Christiane.

– Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy, Ch. 5

The next day, Goethe legitimized their relationship by marrying Christiane in a quiet marriage service at the court chapel. Christiane Vulpius and Goethe produced a son, Karl August von Goethe (25 December 1789 – 28 October 1830), whose wife, Ottilie von Pogwisch (31 October 1796 – 26 October 1872), cared for the elder Goethe until his death in 1832. They had three children: Walther, Freiherr von Goethe (9 April 1818 – 15 April 1885), Wolfgang, Freiherr von Goethe (18 September 1820 – 20 January 1883) and Alma von Goethe (29 October 1827 – 29 September 1844).

Christiane Vulpius died in 1816.

Later life

By 1820, he was on amiable terms with Kaspar Maria von Sternberg. Post-1793, Goethe devoted his endeavour principally to literature.

In 1832, after a life of vast productivity, Goethe died in Weimar. He is buried in the Ducal Vault at Weimar's Historical Cemetery.

Eckermann closes his famous work, Conversations with Goethe, with this passage:

The morning after Goethe's death, a deep desire seized me to look once again upon his earthly garment. His faithful servant, Frederick, opened for me the chamber in which he was laid out. Stretched upon his back, he reposed as if asleep; profound peace and security reigned in the features of his sublimely noble countenance. The mighty brow seemed yet to harbour thoughts. I wished for a lock of his hair; but reverence prevented me from cutting it off. The body lay naked, only wrapped in a white sheet; large pieces of ice had been placed near it, to keep it fresh as long as possible. Frederick drew aside the sheet, and I was astonished at the divine magnificence of the limbs. The breast was powerful, broad, and arched; the arms and thighs were elegant, and of the most perfect shape; nowhere, on the whole body, was there a trace of either fat or of leanness and decay. A perfect man lay in great beauty before me; and the rapture the sight caused me made me forget for a moment that the immortal spirit had left such an abode. I laid my hand on his heart - there was a deep silence - and I turned away to give free vent to my suppressed tears.

– (p. 426, Da Capo Press edition, John Oxenford translation)

Works

Literary work

The most important of Goethe's works produced before he went to Weimar were his tragedy Götz von Berlichingen (1773), which was the first work to bring him recognition, and the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), which gained him enormous fame as a writer in the Sturm und Drang period which marked the early phase of Romanticism - indeed the book is often considered to be the "spark" which ignited the movement, and can arguably be called the world's first "best-seller". (For the entirety of his life this was the work with which the vast majority of Goethe's contemporaries associated him). During the years at Weimar before he met Schiller he began Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, wrote the dramas Iphigenie auf Tauris (Iphigenia in Tauris), Egmont, Torquato Tasso, and the fable Reineke Fuchs.

To the period of his friendship with Schiller belong Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years (the continuation of Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship), the idyll of Hermann and Dorothea, and the Roman Elegies. In the last period, between Schiller's death, in 1805, and his own, appeared Faust Part One, Elective Affinities, the West-Eastern Divan (a collection of poems in the Persian style, influenced by the work of Hafez), his autobiographical Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit (From My Life: Poetry and Truth) which covers his early life and ends with his departure for Weimar, his Italian Journey, and a series of treatises on art. His writings were immediately influential in literary and artistic circles.

Faust Part Two was only finished in the year of his death, and was published posthumously.

Scientific work

As to what I have done as a poet,… I take no pride in it… But that in my century I am the only person who knows the truth in the difficult science of colours - of that, I say, I am not a little proud, and here I have a consciousness of a superiority to many.

– Johann Eckermann, Conversations of Goethe

Although his literary work has attracted the greatest amount of interest, Goethe was also keenly involved in studies of natural science. He wrote several works on plant morphology, and colour theory.

With his focus on morphology he influenced Darwin. His studies led him to independently discover the human intermaxillary bone in 1784, which Broussonet (1779) and Vicq d'Azyr (1780) had (using different methods) identified several years earlier. While not the only one in his time to question the prevailing view that this bone did not exist in humans, Goethe, who believed ancient anatomists had known about this bone, was the first to prove its peculiarity to all mammals.

During his Italian journey, Goethe formulated a theory of plant metamorphosis in which the archetypal form of the plant is to be found in the leaf - he writes, "from top to bottom a plant is all leaf, united so inseparably with the future bud that one cannot be imagined without the other.".

In 1810, Goethe published his Theory of Colours, which he considered his most important work. In it, he (contentiously) characterized colour as arising from the dynamic interplay of darkness and light. After being translated into English by Charles Eastlake in 1840, this theory became widely adopted by the art world, most notably J. M. W. Turner (Bockemuhl, 1991). It also inspired the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, to write his Remarks on Colour. Goethe was vehemently opposed to Newton's analytic treatment of colour, engaging instead in compiling a comprehensive description of a wide variety of colour phenomena. Although Goethe cannot necessarily be criticized for the accuracy and extent of his observations, scientists in general have found little use for his theory because not much can be predicted by means of it. Goethe was, however, the first to systematically study the physiological effects of colour, and his observations on the effect of opposed colors led him to a symmetric arrangement of his colour wheel, 'for the colours diametrically opposed to each other… are those which reciprocally evoke each other in the eye. (Goethe, Theory of Colours, 1810). In this, he anticipated Ewald Hering's opponent color theory (1872).

Goethe outlines his method in the essay, The experiment as mediator between subject and object (1772). In the Kurschner edition of Goethe's works, the science editor, Rudolf Steiner, presents Goethe's approach to science as phenomenological. Steiner elaborated on this in the books The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception and Goethe's World View, in which he emphasizes the need of the perceiving organ of intuition in order to grasp Goethe's biological archetype (i.e. The Typus).

Key works

The short epistolary novel, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, or The Sorrows of Young Werther, published in 1774, recounts an unhappy romantic infatuation that ends in suicide. Goethe admitted that he "shot his hero to save himself": a reference to Goethe's own near-suicidal obsession with a young woman during this period, an obsession he quelled through the writing process. The novel remains in print in dozens of languages and its influence is undeniable; its central hero, an obsessive figure driven to despair and destruction by his unrequited love for the young Lotte, has become a pervasive literary archetype. The fact that Werther ends with the protagonist's suicide and funeral — a funeral which "no clergyman attended" — made the book deeply controversial upon its (anonymous) publication, for on the face of it, it appeared to condone and glorify suicide. Suicide was considered sinful by Christian doctrine: suicides were denied Christian burial with the bodies often mistreated and dishonoured in various ways; in corollary, the deceased's property and possessions were often confiscated by the Church. Epistolary novels were common during this time, letter-writing being a primary mode of communication. What set Goethe's book apart from other such novels was its expression of unbridled longing for a joy beyond possibility, its sense of defiant rebellion against authority, and of principal importance, its total subjectivity: qualities that trailblazed the Romantic movement.

The next work, his epic closet drama Faust, was to be completed in stages, and only published in its entirety after his death. The first part was published in 1808 and created a sensation. The first operatic version, by Spohr, appeared in 1814, and was subsequently the inspiration for operas and oratorios by Schumann, Gounod, Boito, Busoni, and Schnittke as well as symphonic works by Liszt, Wagner, and Mahler. Faust became the ur-myth of many figures in the 19th century. Later, a facet of its plot, i.e., of selling one's soul to the devil for power over the physical world, took on increasing literary importance and became a view of the victory of technology and of industrialism, along with its dubious human expenses. In 1919, the Goetheanum staged the world premiere of a complete production of Faust. On occasion, the play is still staged in Germany and other parts around the world.

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

He is also widely quoted. Epigrams such as "Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him", "Divide and rule, a sound motto; unite and lead, a better one", and "Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must", are still in usage or are often paraphrased. Lines from Faust, such as "Das also war des Pudels Kern", "Das ist der Weisheit letzter Schluss", or "Grau ist alle Theorie" have entered everyday German usage. Although a success of less tasteful appeal, the famous line from the drama Götz von Berlichingen ("Er kann mich im Arsche lecken": "He can lick my arse") has become a vulgar idiom in many languages, and shows Goethe's deep cultural impact extending across social, national, and linguistic borders.

It may be taken as another measure of Goethe's fame that other well-known quotations are often incorrectly attributed to him, such as Hippocrates' "Art is long, life is short", which is found in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.

Eroticism

Many of Goethe's works, especially Faust, the Roman Elegies, and the Venetian Epigrams, depict hetero- and homosexual erotic passions and acts. In Faust, having signed (the Devil insists on his signature in an actual contract) his deal with the devil, the very first use of his new power thus gained sees Faust raping a young teenage girl. In fact, some of the Venetian Epigrams were held back from publication due to their sexual content. However, Karl Hugo Pruys caused national controversy in Germany when his 1999 book The Tiger's Tender Touch: The Erotic Life of Goethe tentatively deduced from Goethe's writings the possibility of Goethe's homosexuality. The sexual portraitures and allusions in his work may stem from one of the many effects of Goethe's eye-opening sojourn in Italy, where men, who shunned the prevalence of women's venereal diseases and unconscionable conditions, embraced homosexuality as a solution that was not widely imitated outside of Italy. Whatever the case, Goethe clearly saw sexuality in general as a topic that merited poetic and artistic depiction. This went against the thought of his time, when the very private nature of sexuality was rigorously normative, and makes him appear more modern than he is typically thought to be.

Religion

Born into a Protestant (Lutheran) family, Goethe's early faith was shaken by news of such events as the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and the Seven Years' War. His later spiritual perspective evolved among pantheism, humanism, and various elements of Western esotericism, as seen most vividly in Part II of Faust.

A year before his death he expressed an identification with the Hypsistarians, an ancient Jewish-pagan sect of the Black Sea region. After describing his difficulties with mainstream religion, Goethe laments:

…I have found no confession of faith to which I could ally myself without reservation. Now in my old age, however, I have learned of a sect, the Hypsistarians, who, hemmed in between heathens, Jews and Christians, declared that they would treasure, admire, and honour the best, the most perfect that might come to their knowledge, and inasmuch as it must have a close connection to the Godhead, pay it reverence. A joyous light thus beamed at me suddenly out of a dark age, for I had the feeling that all my life I had been aspiring to qualify as a Hypsistarian. That, however, is no small task, for how does one, in the limitations of one's individuality, come to know what is most excellent?

– from a letter to Sulpiz Boisserée dated 22 March 1831

Historical importance This article needs additional citations for verification.

Goethe had a great effect on the nineteenth century. In many respects, he was the originator of many ideas which later became widespread. He produced volumes of poetry, essays, criticism, a theory of colours and early work on evolution and linguistics. He was fascinated by mineralogy, and the mineral goethite is named after him. His non-fiction writings, most of which are philosophic and aphoristic in nature, spurred the development of many philosophers, including G.W.F. Hegel, Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernst Cassirer, Carl Jung, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Along with Schiller, he was one of the leading figures of Weimar Classicism.

Goethe embodied many of the contending strands in art over the next century: his work could be lushly emotional, and rigorously formal, brief and epigrammatic, and epic. He would argue that classicism was the means of controlling art, and that romanticism was a sickness, even as he penned poetry rich in memorable images, and rewrote the formal rules of German poetry. Even in contemporary culture, he stands in the background as the author of the story upon which Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice is based.

His poetry was set to music by almost every major Austrian and German composer from Mozart to Mahler, and his influence would spread to French drama and opera as well. Beethoven declared that a "Faust" Symphony would be the greatest thing for Art. Liszt and Mahler both created symphonies in whole or in large part inspired by this seminal work, which would give the 19th century one of its most paradigmatic figures: Doctor Faustus.

The Faust tragedy/drama, often called "Das Drama der Deutschen" (the drama of the Germans), written in two parts published decades apart, would stand as his most characteristic and famous artistic creation. Followers of the twentieth century esotericist Rudolf Steiner built a theatre named the Goetheanum after him - where festival performances of Faust are still performed.

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

The Federal Republic of Germany’s cultural institution, The Goethe-Institut is named after him, and promotes the study of German abroad and fosters knowledge about Germany by providing information on its culture, society and politics.

Influence

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

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

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

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

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

Bibliography
- Goethe: The History of a Man by Emil Ludwig
- Goethe by Georg Brandes
- Goethe: his life and times by Richard Friedenthal
- Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns by Thomas Mann
- Conversations with Goethe by Johann Peter Eckermann
- Goethe's World: as seen in letters and memoirs ed. by Berthold Biermann
- Goethe: Four Studies by Albert Schweitzer
- Goethe and his Publishers by Siegfied Unseld
- Goethe: The Poet and the Age (2 Vols.), by Nicholas Boyle
- Goethe's Concept of the Daemonic: After the Ancients, by Angus Nicholls
- Goethe and Rousseau: Resonances of ther Mind, by Carl Hammer, Jr.
 

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List of Goethe books available through Project Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/g

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832
- Les affinités électives, Suivies d'un choix de pensées du même (French)
- Die Aufgeregten (German)
- Autobiography: Truth and Fiction Relating to My Life (English)
- Belagerung von Mainz (German)
- Briefe aus der Schweiz (German)
- Egmont (English)
- Egmont (German)
- [Einleitung zu:] Thomas Carlyle, Leben Schillers (German)
- Erotica Romana (English)
- Faust (English)
- Faust; a Tragedy, Translated from the German of Goethe (English)
- Faust: Der Tragödie erster Teil (German)
- Faust: Der Tragödie zweiter Teil (German)
- Faust, Eine Tragödie (German)
- Faust I (Finnish)
- Faust — Part 1 (English)
- Die Geschwister (German)
- Goethen runoja (Finnish)
- Götz von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand, Ein Schauspiel (German)
- Hermann and Dorothea (English)
- Hermann und Dorothea (German)
- Ifigenio en Taurido (Esperanto)
- Iphigenia in Tauris (English)
- Iphigenie auf Tauris (German)
- Italienische Reise, Band 1 (German)
- Italienische Reise, Band 2 (German)
- Kampagne in Frankreich (German)
- Die Laune des Verliebten
- Ein Schäferspiel in Versen und einem Akt (German)
- Die Leiden des jungen Werther (German)
- Die Leiden des jungen Werther, Band 1 (German)
- Die Leiden des jungen Werther, Band 2 (German)
- Le renard (French)
- Die Mitschuldigen (German)
- Die natürliche Tochter (German)
- Novelle (German)
- The Poems of Goethe, Translated in the original metres (English)
- Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books, with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations (English) (as Contributor)
- Prometheus, Dramatisches Fragment (German)
- Reineke Fuchs (German)
- Römische Elegien (German)
- Römische Elegien (German)
- Runoelmia (Finnish)
- Satyros oder Der vergötterte Waldteufel (German)
- The Sorrows of Young Werther (English)
- Torquato Tasso (Finnish)
- Torquato Tasso (German)
- Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten (German)
- Venetianische Epigramme (German)
- Die Wahlverwandtschaften (German)
- West-östlicher Divan (German)
- Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Band 1 (German)
- Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Band 2 (German)
- Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Band 3 (German)
- Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Band 4 (German)
- Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Band 5 (German)
- Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Band 6 (German)
- Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Band 7 (German)
- Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Band 8 (German)
- Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, Band 1 (German)
- Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, Band 2 (German)
- Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, Band 3 (German)

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Goethe quotes:

All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.

A clever man commits no minor blunders.
A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss.
A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.
A man's manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.
A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.
A person hears only what they understand.
A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.
A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.
A useless life is an early death.
Age merely shows what children we remain.
All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.
All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is exclusively my own.
All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.
All things are only transitory.
An unused life is an early death.
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.
Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.
Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.
Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.
Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.
Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.
Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.
Character develops itself in the stream of life.
Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.
Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.
Common sense is the genius of humanity.
Correction does much, but encouragement does more.
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.
Deeply earnest and thoughtful people stand on shaky footing with the public.
Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.
Devote each day to the object then in time and every evening will find something done.
Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.
Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.
Doubt grows with knowledge.
Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.
Error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age.
Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.
Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.
Every person above the ordinary has a certain mission that they are called to fulfill.
Every spoken word arouses our self-will.
Every step of life shows much caution is required.
Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.
Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.
Few people have the imagination for reality.
First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.
For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.
For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.
Fresh activity is the only means of overcoming adversity.
Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.
Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.
Great thoughts and a pure heart, that is what we should ask from God.
Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.
Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.
Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.
He is dead in this world who has no belief in another.
He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.
He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.
He who does not think much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines.
He who enjoys doing and enjoys what he has done is happy.
He who has a task to perform must know how to take sides, or he is quite unworthy of it.
He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.
I call architecture frozen music.
I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better that book or orator.
I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.
I love those who yearn for the impossible.
I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.
I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.
I will listen to anyone's convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself.
If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.
If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.
If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.
If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.
If I love you, what business is it of yours?
If you modestly enjoy your fame you are not unworthy to rank with the holy.
If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own.
If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.
If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.
If your treat an individual... as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.
Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.
In art the best is good enough.
In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.
In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm... in the real world all rests on perseverance.
It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.
It is better to be deceived by one's friends than to deceive them.
It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself.
It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.
It is the strange fate of man, that even in the greatest of evils the fear of the worst continues to haunt him.
It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.
Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.
Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.
Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.
Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.
Life is the childhood of our immortality.
Live dangerously and you live right.
Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.
Love can do much, but duty more.
Love does not dominate; it cultivates.
Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.
Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.
Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.
Mastery passes often for egotism.
Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.
Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.
Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.
Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.
No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.
No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.
Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.
Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.
Nothing is to be rated higher than the value of the day.
Nothing is worth more than this day.
Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.
Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.
On all the peaks lies peace.
One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.
One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.
One cannot develop taste from what is of average quality but only from the very best.
One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.
Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.
Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.
Personality is everything in art and poetry.
Piety is not a goal but a means to attain through the purest peace of mind the highest culture.
Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.
Precaution is better than cure.
Science arose from poetry... when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.
Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.
Sowing is not as difficult as reaping.
Superstition is the poetry of life.
Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.
Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.
The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.
The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.
The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.
The Christian religion, though scattered and abroad will in the end gather itself together at the foot of the cross.
The coward only threatens when he is safe.
The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.
The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.
The deed is everything, the glory is naught.
The deed is everything, the glory naught.
The formation of one's character ought to be everyone's chief aim.
The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.
The human mind will not be confined to any limits.
The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
The little man is still a man.
The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part.
The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.
The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.
The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.
The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.
The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.
The right man is the one who seizes the moment.
The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.
The unnatural, that too is natural.
The world remains ever the same.
There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From its springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.
There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing one's self on lies and fables.
There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.
There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.
There is nothing more frightful than imagination without taste.
There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.
Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.
Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.
This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.
Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.
To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.
To create something you must be something.
To hard necessity ones will and fancy must conform.
To rule is easy, to govern difficult.
To the person with a firm purpose all men and things are servants.
To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.
Trust yourself, then you will know how to live.
Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.
We always have time enough, if we will but use it aright.
We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.
We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.
We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.
We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.
We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.
We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.
We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.
We will burn that bridge when we come to it.
What by a straight path cannot be reached by crooked ways is never won.
What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.
What is my life if I am no longer useful to others.
What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.
What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.
What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.
When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
Where is the man who has the strength to be true, and to show himself as he is?
Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.
Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them.
Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.
Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one.
Wisdom is found only in truth.
Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.

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The Essence of the Romantic Movement:

Romanticism began in Europe in the eighteenth century as an artistic and intellectual movement. “It was characterized by a heightened interest in nature, emphasis on the individual’s expression of emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism, and rebellion against established social rules and conventions.” This changed the way people thought and expressed themselves and the way they lived, both socially and politically. Romanticism was a movement by many strong-willed people who changed Europe with their works; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe with his literature; Richard Wagner, his music; and Friedrich Nietzsche with his philosophy.

There were many components of Romanticism. Nationalism was very important, and many composers used this to emphasize national identity. The Brothers Grimm developed folklore, collected German tales, and published books. Art during the Romantic Period was given an aesthetic value, instead of just a price. Romanticism is a reaction against Classicism, Rationalism, and Deism of the eighteenth century.
 

Romanticism became popular from the years 1800 to 1850. The first phase of the Romantic Movement was in Germany with the innovations in content and literary style and by obsession with the supernatural. The Germans rebelled against Napoleonic rule, French civilization, and the philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment. Germany became the most romantic of all countries, and German influence spread throughout Europe.
 

The works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe were examples of Romantic Period literature. He was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and studied law at Leipzig University. Goethe was a German novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist, philosopher, and chief minister of state at Weimer. Goethe’s first play was inspired by a love affair and he later published his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, in 1774. This novel, written in a series of letters, started the model of the Romantic hero. Goethe helped fight against France in the Napoleonic wars. Faust is Goethe’s masterwork, which he worked on for most of his life. He started writing Faust at the age of twenty-three and finished in the year 1832, just before he died. The first part of Faust was published in 1808, and was about 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 begins to create a perfect community. Faust is satisfied in the end and taken to Heaven. Goethe was director of the court theatres from 1791 to 1817. Goethe believed Theory of Colours was his most important contribution to science, and placed it above all his literary work. He believed that darkness was more than the absence of light. He thought: "That I am the only person in this century who has the right insight into the difficult science of colours, that is what I am rather proud of, and that is what gives me the feeling that I have outstripped many." In the last portion of Goethe’s life, he wrote more novels and his autobiography.
 

Goethe was an irreplaceable piece of the Romantic Movement. His poetry, essays, criticism, and scientific work were a stepping-stone for Romanticism. Hegel, Nietzsche, and Steiner added upon many of Goethe’s philosophic ideas. Many famous German composers set some of his poetry. Goethe’s many different writing styles helped him captivate listeners and earn the respect of many.
 

Richard Wagner was born in the middle of the Romantic Period. He wrote his first play at the age of fifteen and his first composition at sixteen. Wagner studied music under C.T. Weinlig at Leipzig University in 1831. He became chorus master at the Wurzburg theatre and wrote his first opera in 1833. He married the singer from one of his operas, Minna Planer, in 1836, and moved to Konigsberg where he was musical director at the theatre. The couple moved around and Wagner ended up as joint Kapellmeister at the Dresden court. Wagner left Germany and was unable to reenter for eleven years. Minna and Wagner grew apart and tension rose between them. In 1862, they separated and Wagner was allowed back in the country. The next year, King Ludwig paid off Wagner’s debt and invited him to Bavaria. Again, Wagner only stayed for a short period of time. A year later he left due to opposition in Ludwig’s court, and his affair with Cosimo, the wife of the conductor Hans von Bulow. He wrote two contrasting operas; Tristan, an erotic story about sexual love, and The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, a comedy set in the sixteenth century. Cosima and Wagner had two children and were married in 1870. Wagner spent most of 1880 in Italy working on a new opera, Parsifal. In 1882, he traveled to Venice where he died in February due to heart trouble.
 

Wagner’s different music and works caused viewers to either love them or hate them, but also respect them. His chromatic musical language later influenced European classical music, including atonality. Wagner was also known for his anti-Semitic views. Wagner left his mark on the world with his controversial plays, operas, essays, and songs. His contentious style was the epitome of music from the Romantic Movement.
 

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, considered to be one of the first existentialist philosophers, was born in the town of Rocken bei Lutzen in 1844. After the death of his father and brother, he and his family moved to Naumburg an der Saale. Nietzsche graduated from boarding school and entered the University of Bonn in 1864 as a theology and philology student. He entered the military but suffered a serious chest injury and was put on sick leave. Nietzsche and Richard Wagner met in 1868 after Nietzsche went back to the University of Leipzig. Nietzsche admired Wagner for his musical genius and personality. At the age of twenty-four, Nietzsche began teaching classical philology. The Unfashionable Observations was a series of four studies on contemporary German culture and was finished in 1876. Human, All-Too-Human was a turning point in Nietzsche’s philosophical style and indicated the end of his friendship with Wagner. Nietzsche left the university due to poor health from his previous accident. Nietzsche moved around from place to place until his mental breakdown in1889. On August 25, 1900, Nietzsche died apparently of pneumonia in combination with a stroke.
 

Nietzsche was a philosopher who challenged the foundations of traditional morality and Christianity. Life-affirmation is Nietzsche’s philosophy, which involves questioning all documents that take away from life, no matter how socially acceptable those views may be.
 

Thus Spoke Zarathustra was considered by Nietzsche to be one of his most important works. As a professed atheist, his views were anti Judeo-Christian and he stressed the nature related aspects of life such as animals, fire, and water. Despite his almost lifelong illness, Nietzsche’s works were able to influence people from the arts community to German soldiers. The German government ordered 150,000 copies of Thus Spoke Zarathustra along with the Bible to be passed out to German soldiers during World War I. He believed in life, creativity, health, and the realities of the world.
 

The Romantic Movement provided a bridge between Classicism of the seventeenth and eighteenth century and the technological advances of the twentieth century. There were many key figures during this time period who changed the way people thought with their literature, music, philosophy, and art. Laws of science predominated along with human reason. The Romantic era enabled people to focus on themselves and nature, and countries to emphasize their national identity.

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