Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Guide to Goethe’s Life and Works

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German poet, writer, playwright, scientist, and statesman active in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. A restless polymath, Goethe was a seminal figure in both the Enlightenment and the Romantic periods with interests in art, science, philosophy, politics, and psychology. Goethe’s influence on world literature, and Western culture in general, persists to this day.

Goethe’s philosophy was of a piece with his approaches to science, literature, and the arts. Like many intellectuals of his day, he was a child of the Enlightenment, believing that human progress and mastery over nature are accomplished through humans’ unique ability to reason. Over time, Goethe became a major figure in the Romantic movement, which emphasized nature’s wild, mysterious qualities and sought a more harmonious coexistence within it, rather than outright mastery. This view was widely embraced in contemporary culture, and later, by figures such as Beethoven and Thomas Mann.

Goethe’s life was exceptionally active and accomplished. His influence in several spheres of human activity is wide as well as deep, and includes a legal career and accolades as a writer.

• Early life: Goethe was born in 1749 in the city of Frankfurt am Main in Germany. He was a privileged child, and along with his sister Cornelia, received a first-rate education. He learned Latin, Greek, Hebrew, English, and French, among other languages, and was deeply acquainted with science and literature. As a young man, he went to Leipzig to study law.
• Legal career: In 1770, after a bout of ill health, Goethe left for Strasbourg, where he continued to study law. At this time, he deepened his interest in poetry and literature, a process abetted by his friendship with Johann Gottfried Herder, who encouraged his interest in William Shakespeare. After earning his degree, Goethe established a small legal practice, but his true passion was literature.
• Early success: After some moderate acclaim with his initial writing efforts, including the drama Götz von Berlichingen in 1773, Goethe found early, phenomenal success with the publication of The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774. The short epistolary novel was a worldwide sensation. It brought him rapid fame and led to his crucial post in the city of Weimer as a high-ranking civil servant and advisor of Karl August, Duke of Saxe-Weimar. In addition to his new duties, Goethe continued writing; his drama Iphigenie auf Tauris was published in 1779, and his epic poem Hermann and Dorothea was composed in 1796 and 1797.
• Italian journey: Over the years of 1786 to 1788, Goethe visited Italy, exploring the peninsula and the island of Sicily. Goethe had an early love of Homer and was familiar with Classicism from his childhood education. The trip to Italy deepened his admiration for ancient Rome, which further informed his aesthetics and his sense of history. His diary of this period was published in 1816 and 1817 as the Italian Journey. His experiences in Italy also helped inspire his Roman Elegies, a cycle of poems.
• Weimar: Back in Weimar, Goethe resumed his bureaucratic duties. Throughout the French Revolution, he also kept up with his wide-ranging interests and creative work. He wrote treatises on art, made contributions to the modern theory of color, and wrote fiction and drama. After living with Christiane Vulpius for eighteen years, with whom he had children, he finally formalized their marriage in 1806.
• Later years: Goethe was active in his old age, despite failing health. He continued to write creatively and contribute to scientific pursuits. Goethe died in 1832; his last words were supposedly “More light!”

Goethe’s works fill many large volumes of print. Below is a list of some of his most famous scientific and literary contributions:

1. 1. Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther) (1774): This epistolary novel, depicting a love triangle that ends in suicide of the narrator, was a sensation across Europe. The doomed love affair exemplified the Sturm und Drang (“storm and stress”) movement within Romanticism. Because it was based on real people in Goethe’s life, and because it was believed to inspire some actual suicides, it was the subject of some public condemnation, although it cemented his reputation as a major German writer.
2. 2. Metamorphosis of Plants (1790): Goethe’s first major scientific work was an outgrowth of his fascination with plant morphology, or the shape and form of plants. The book was an important contribution to theories of change in nature that would eventually culminate in Darwin’s theory of evolution.
3. 3. Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795): Goethe’s second novel tells the story of a man’s journey to self-realization. Considered by literary historians to be a foundational text of the bildungsroman genre, its creation was assisted and encouraged by the support of Goethe’s great friend Friedrich Schiller.
4. 4. Hermann and Dorothea (1796): Goethe’s epic poem is set during the French Revolution.
5. 5. Faust (1808, 1831): Goethe’s most celebrated dramatic work tells the story of a scholar, Faust, who sells his soul to a devil, Mephistopheles, in exchange for worldly power and knowledge. Goethe’s Faust is one of the most famous versions of the German legend and is considered by many scholars to be the most significant work of verse in German literature. The two-part novel has been translated into several languages and has inspired operas, musical compositions, and films.
6. 6. Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities) (1809): Goethe’s second novel explores the complications that ensue between a married couple and their house guests.
7. 7. Theory of Colors (1810): Goethe considered this book, a theoretical treatise on the nature of light and color, to be his most important work. It differed from Isaac Newton’s book on the same topic by exploring the experience of color in human perception, rather than an analytical treatment of the phenomenon grounded in physics.

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