Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang Goethe, from 1782 von Goethe (* 28 August 1749 in Frankfurt am Main; † 22 March 1832 in Weimar), was a German poet and naturalist. He is considered one of the most important creators of German-language poetry.

Goethe came from a distinguished bourgeois family; his maternal grandfather was the highest judicial official in the city of Frankfurt, his father was a doctor of law and an imperial councillor. He and his sister Cornelia received a lavish education from tutors. Following his father's wishes, Goethe studied law in Leipzig and Strasbourg and then worked as a lawyer in Wetzlar and Frankfurt. At the same time he followed his inclination to poetry. He achieved his first recognition in the literary world in 1773 with the drama Goetz von Berlichingen, which brought him national success, and in 1774 with the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, to which he owed even European success. Both works belong to the literary movement of Sturm und Drang (1765 to 1785).

At the age of 26 he was invited to the court of Weimar, where he eventually settled for the rest of his life. He held political and administrative offices there as a friend and minister of Duke Carl August and directed the court theatre for a quarter of a century. After the first decade of Weimar, his official duties, with the neglect of his creative abilities, precipitated a personal crisis which Goethe escaped by fleeing to Italy. The trip to Italy from September 1786 to May 1788 felt like a "rebirth". He owed to it the completion of important works such as Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787), Egmont (1788) and Torquato Tasso (1790).

After his return, his official duties were largely limited to representative tasks. The wealth of cultural heritage he experienced in Italy stimulated his poetic production, and his erotic experiences with a young Roman woman led him to enter into a lasting, "unstandsgemäße" love affair with Christiane Vulpius immediately after his return, which he did not officially legalize until eighteen years later with a marriage.

Goethe's literary works include poetry, drama, epic poetry, autobiographical writings, writings on art and literary theory, and scientific writings. In addition, his extensive correspondence is of literary importance. Goethe was the forerunner and most important representative of the Sturm und Drang. His novel The Sorrows of Young Werther made him famous in Europe. Even Napoleon asked him for an audience on the occasion of the Erfurt Congress of Princes. In alliance with Schiller and together with Herder and Wieland he embodied the Weimar Classicism. The Wilhelm Meister novels became exemplary forerunners of German-language artistic and Bildungsromane. His drama Faust (1808) gained a reputation as the most important creation in German-language literature. In his old age he was also regarded abroad as a representative of intellectual Germany.

In the German Empire he was transfigured as a German national poet and herald of the "German essence" and as such was appropriated for German nationalism. This led to a veneration not only of the work but also of the poet's personality, whose way of life was seen as exemplary. To this day, Goethe's poems, dramas and novels are among the masterpieces of world literature.

Honors

Goethe received various orders and decorations. Napoleon Bonaparte presented him with the Knight's Cross of the French Legion of Honour (Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur) on 14 October 1808. Napoleon commented on the encounter with the legendary saying "Voilà un homme!" (meaning "What a man!"). Goethe appreciated this order, as he was an admirer of the French emperor.

In 1805 Goethe was accepted as an honorary member at the University of Moscow. On 15 October 1808 he received the Russian Order of Saint Anne 1st Class from Tsar Alexander I. In 1815 Emperor Franz I decorated Goethe with the Austrian Imperial Order of Leopold. On 30 January 1816 Goethe received the Grand Cross of the House Order of the White Falcon (also House Order of Vigilance), revived by Grand Duke Carl August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. He received the award for his official activities as a privy councillor and for his political activities. In 1818 Goethe received the Officer's Cross of the Order of the Legion of Honour from the French King Louis XVIII. On his 78th birthday, August 28, 1827, he received his last decoration, the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown. King Ludwig I of Bavaria came personally to the award ceremony.

Goethe had a pragmatic relationship with decorations. To the portrait painter Moritz Daniel Oppenheim he said in May 1827: "A title and a medal keeps off many a whorehouse in a crowd ..." The asteroid of the middle main belt (3047) Goethe was named after him.

Portrait of Goethe by Heinrich Christoph Kolbe, 1822

Descendants

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and his wife Christiane had five children. Only August, the first born, (* 25 December 1789; † 27 October 1830) reached adulthood. One child was already stillborn, the others all died very young, which was not unusual in those days. August had three children, Walther Wolfgang (b. 9 April 1818; † 15 April 1885), Wolfgang Maximilian (b. 18 September 1820; † 20 January 1883), and Alma Sedina (b. 29 October 1827; † 29 September 1844). August died two years before his father in Rome. After his death, his wife Ottilie von Goethe gave birth to another child (not August's) named Anna Sibylle, who died after one year. Their children remained unmarried, so that the direct line of descendants of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died out in 1885. His sister Cornelia had two children (nieces of Goethe), whose descendants (Nicolovius line) are still living. See Goethe (family).

Goethe had appointed his three grandsons as universal heirs. As the survivor of the three grandsons, Walther secured the family legacy for the public. In his will, he bequeathed Goethe's archives to Grand Duchess Sophie personally, and the collections and real estate to the state of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach.