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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) is by quality and impact of his work compared with Dante, Homer, Shakespeare and other immortals.

He was not only an artist, he studied law, just like many other famous writers (Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, Jean de La Fontaine, …) During his legal studies he took drawing lessons and when he moved from Leipzig to Strassbourg, he started to study medicine as well. He was also deeply interested in poetry and occultism. He later studied architecture, botany, mineralogy, and optics too. For several years he was the minister of state in fields of agriculture, horticulture, and mining. He was benighted by Emperor Joseph II and helped planning a botanical part in Weimar and reforming the University of Jena.

Apart from extreme productivity, it seems he was very good at bad things turned into good ones. When for instance French army occupied his birth town Frankfurt, he used the situation to improve French and learned a lot about theatre because with the army came a theatrical group.

Problems with lungs forced him to change his lifestyle and almost two years of recovery changed his playful artistic expression to more serious and introspective. In a way, we can say his illness helped him to mature as a person and artist. At the end of a recovery period, he also moved to Strasbourg where he met Johann Gottfried von Herder, who helped him to develop an interest in architecture and introduced him to new literary works.

 

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He was not only productive, he showed some remarkable consistency, what is clearly seen in Faust, his lifetime project, which he had written and rewritten for decades with part two published only after his death.

During his life, Goethe met many important people, but let’s try to focus on ladies only.

Here are some remarkable women of Goethe’s life:

 

1. Between 1765 and 1768 in Leipzig he wrote a lot of poetry which was inspired by Anna (Annette) Katharina Schnkopf. She was a daughter of a wine merchant in whose tavern Goethe dined. These poems (the collection was titled Annette) were published anonymously and were rediscovered only in 1895.

 

2. During his years in Strasbourg, he was in love with pastor’s daughter Friederike Brion, who inspired many lyrics too, but the most important character she inspired was definitely Gretchen in Faust.

 

3. When he ended legal studies and moved to Wetzlar to learn his profession at empire supreme courts, he fell in love with Charlotte Buff, who rejected him and married one of his acquaintances (they had twelve kids together). Goethe was so deeply in love, he actually bought rings, but everything ended pretty miserably for him (he was on the edge of suicide) and pretty good for world literature. His love to Charlotte inspired The Sorrows of Young Werther (the title character was in love with Lotte, who was engaged with somebody else), Goethe’s first bestseller, one of greatest works in world literature and is caused a lot of controversies because it probably encouraged many young men to commit suicides.

 

4. Only one year after Sorrows of Young Werther’s publishing Goethe found new great love. Her name was Lili Schneemann and her father was a banker. A young couple got engaged but Goethe realized him and her world can’t mix, so he resigned. At least three beautiful love poems resulted from his short-lived obsession with Lili: New Love, a new Life, To Belinda and On the Lake.

 

5. Goethe served as a high state officer for twelve years (he even became the president of Treasury) in Weimar where his lover was Charlotte von Stein, who was married and had seven kids with somebody else. The relationship was not so emotional as some at an earlier age, but we can’t deny her influence on Goethe’s artistic development. She was seven years older than him after all. He produced much more sophisticated works.

 

6. Their relationship lasted ten years, but the woman of his life was actually long-time mistress and mother of his son Julius August Walther. Her name was Christiane Vulpius, she was sixteen years younger and they lived together ‘in sin’ for eighteen years before they married. She certainly influenced Goethe’s works too and Roman Elegies (Erotica Romana), often censored collection of highly erotic songs, is only one of them.

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Christiane portrayed by Goethe (he produced about three thousand drawings!)

7. Even in later years, he didn’t stop falling in love. He was already 70 years old when Austrian dances and actress Marianne von Willemer (who was exactly half younger) served as a model of Suleika in the cycle of lyrics titled West-Eastern Diwan. By the way, she was married too.

 

8. And there was Baroness Ulrike von Levetzow, who was only 17 when they first met. Goethe’s passion, which he tried to convert in marriage (but was rejected) eventually resulted in Trilogy of Passion with several immortal songs. Ulrike was last love of this great man and the final answer to the probably most important question about him:

 

What was Goethe’s greatest obsession: art, science or nature?

 

Well, I think it was love!