GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON greatest of German poets, was born at Frankfurt-on-Main. He came, on, his father's side, of Thuringian stock, his great-grand father, Hans Christian Goethe, having been a farrier at Artern-on the-Unstrut, about the middle of the 17th century. Hans Chris tian's son, Georg Friedrich, was brought up to the trade of a tailor, and in this capacity settled in Frankfurt in 1687. A second marriage, however, brought him into possession of the Frankfurt inn, "Zum Weidenhof," and he ended his days as a well-to-do inn keeper. His son, Johann Kaspar, the poet's father (1710-1782), studied law at Leipzig, and subsequently travelled in Italy. He hoped, on his return to Frankfurt, to obtain an official position in the government of the free city, but he had not sufficient personal influence to attain this end. In his disappointment he resolved never again to offer his services to his native town, and retired into private life. In 1742 he acquired, as a consolation for the public career he had missed, the title of kaiserlicher Rat, and in 1748 married Katharina Elisabeth (1731-1808), daughter of the Schultheiss or Burgermeister of Frankfurt, Johann Wolfgang Textor. The poet was the eldest son of this union. Of the later children only one, Cornelia (b. 175o), survived the years of child hood; she died as the wife of Goethe's friend, J. G. Schlosser, in 1777. The best elements in Goethe's genius came from his mother's side ; of a lively, impulsive disposition, and gifted with remarkable imaginative power, Frau Rat, who was hardly 18 when her son was born, was the ideal mother of a poet. From his fa ther, whose stern, somewhat pedantic nature repelled warmer feelings on the part of the children, Goethe inherited, besides an unamiable stiffness of manner which grew on him with the years, that stability of character which brought him unscathed through temptations and passions, and held the balance to his all too power ful imagination.
Unforgettable is the picture which the poet has left us of his childhood spent in the large house with its many nooks and cran nies in the Grosse Hirschgraben at Frankfurt. Books, pictures, objects of art, antiquities, reminiscences of Rat Goethe's visit to Italy, above all a marionette theatre, kindled the child's quick in tellect and imagination. His education was conducted in its early stages by his father, and was later supplemented by tutors. Mean while the varied and picturesque life of Frankfurt was in itself a liberal education. In 1759, during the Seven Years' War, the French, as Maria Theresa's allies, occupied the town, and, much to the irritation of Goethe's father, who was a stanch partisan of Frederick the Great, a French lieutenant, Count Thoranc, was quartered on the Goethe household. The foreign occupation also led to the establishment of a French troupe of actors, and to their performances the boy, through his grandfather's influence, had free access. One of Goethe's most vivid memories was the pic turesque coronation of the emperor Joseph II. in the Frankfurt Romer or town hall in 1764 ; he also dwells at some length in his autobiography on his first love affair. The object of this passion was a certain Gretchen, who seems to have taken advantage of the boy's interest in her to further the dishonest ends of one of her friends. The discovery of the affair and the investigation that f ol lowed cooled Goethe's ardour and caused him to turn his attention seriously to the studies which were to prepare him for the uni versity. Meanwhile his literary instinct had begun to show itself ; we hear of a novel in letters—a kind of linguistic exercise, in which the characters carried on the correspondence in different languages—of a prose epic on the subject of Joseph, and various religious poems of which one, Die Hollen f ahrt Christi, found its way in a revised form into the poet's complete works.
In Oct. 1765, Goethe, then a little over 16, left Frankfurt for Leipzig, where a wider life awaited him. He entered upon his uni versity studies with zeal, but his education in Frankfurt had not been the best preparation for the scholastic methods which still dominated the German universities; of his professors, only Gellert seems to have won his interest, and that interest was soon exhausted. The literary beginnings he had made in Frankfurt now seemed to him worthless ; he committed them to the flames; and, under the guidance of E. W. Behrisch, a genial, if somewhat eccentric comrade, he turned over a new leaf ; he acquired the art of writing those light Anacreontic lyrics which appealed to the taste of the polite Leipzig society of the day. Artificial as this poetry is, Goethe was, nevertheless, inspired by a real passion in Leipzig, namely, for Anna Katharina Schonkopf, the daughter of a wine-merchant at whose tavern he dined. She is the "Annette" after whom the collection of lyrics discovered in 1897 was named, although it must be added that neither these lyrics nor the Neue Lieder, published in 177o, let us see very much of Goethe's real feelings for Kathchen Schonkopf. To his Leipzig student days belong also two small plays in Alexandrines, Die Laune des Verliebten, a comedy in one act, which reflects the lighter side of the poet's love affair, and Die Mitschuldigen (published in a re vised form, 1769), a more sombre production, in which comedy is incongruously mingled with tragedy. In Leipzig Goethe also had time for what remained one of the abiding interests of his life, for art ; he regarded A. F. Oeser (1717-1799) , the director of the academy of painting in the Pleissenburg, who gave him lessons in drawing, as the teacher by whom he was most influenced in Leip zig. His art studies were also furthered by a short visit to Dres den. His stay in Leipzig came, however, to an abrupt conclusion ; the distractions of student life proved too much for his strength; a sudden haemorrhage supervened, and he lay long first in Leipzig, and, after it was possible to remove him, at home in Frankfurt. These months of slow recovery were a time of serious introspection for Goethe. He still corresponded with his Leipzig friends, but the tone of his letters changed; life had become more serious for him. He pored over books on occult philosophy ; he busied himself with alchemy and astrology. A friend of his mother's, Susanne Katharina von Klettenberg, who belonged to pietist circles in Frankfurt, turned the boy's thoughts to religious mysticism.
On his recovery his father resolved that his legal studies should be completed at Strasbourg, a city, which although then outside the German empire, was, in respect of language and culture, wholly German. From the moment Goethe set foot in the narrow streets of the Alsatian capital, in April 1770, the whole current of his thought seemed to change. The Gothic architecture of the Strasbourg minster became to him the symbol of a national and German ideal, directly antagonistic to the French tastes and the classical and rationalistic atmosphere that prevailed in Leipzig. An event of the first importance in Goethe's Strasbourg period was his meeting with Herder, who spent some weeks in Strasbourg undergoing an operation. In this thinker, who was his senior by five years, Goethe found the master he sought ; Herder taught him the significance of Gothic architecture, revealed to him the beauty of nature unadorned, and inspired him with enthusiasm for Shakespeare and the Volkslied. Meanwhile Goethe's legal studies were not neglected, and he found time to add to his knowledge in other fields, notably medicine. Another factor of importance in Goethe's Strasbourg life was his love for Friderike Brion, the daughter of an Alsatian village pastor in Sesenheim. Even more than Herder's precept and example, this passion showed Goethe how trivial and artificial had been the Anacreontic and pastoral poetry, which had occupied him in Leipzig ; and the lyrics inspired by Friderike, such as Kleine Blumen, kleine Blotter and Wie herrlich leuchtet inir die Natur! mark the beginning of a new epoch in German lyric poetry. The idyll of Sesenheim, as de scribed in Dichtung and Wahrheit, is one of the beautiful love stories in the literature of the world. From the first, however, it was clear that Friderike Brion could never become the wife of the Frankfurt patrician's son; an unhappy ending to the romance was unavoidable, and, as is to be seen in passionate outpourings like Wanderers Sturmlied, and in the bitter self-accusations of Clavigo, it left deep wounds on the poet's sensitive nature.
In Strasbourg Goethe probably planned his first important drama, Glitz von Berlichingen. In estimating this drama we must bear in mind Goethe's own life, and the turbulent spirit of his age, rather than the historical facts, which the poet found in an auto biography of his hero published in 1731. The latter supplied only the rough materials; the Glitz von Berlichingen whom Goethe drew, with his humane ideals of justice and his enthusiasm for freedom, is a very different personage from the unscrupulous rob ber-knight of the r6th century. There is no historical justification for the vacillating Weisslingen in whom Goethe executed poetic justice on himself as the lover of Friderike, or for the women of the play, the gentle Maria, the heartless Adelheid. But there is genial, creative power in all the characters, and a vigorous dra matic life in the play's action, irresistible in its appeal even to a modern audience. With Glitz von Berlichingen the Shakespear ian form of drama was established on the German stage, and the literary movement known as Sturm and Drang inaugurated.
Having received his licence to practice as an advocate, Goethe returned home in Aug. 1771, and began his initiation into the rou tine of his profession. In the following year, in order to gain further experience in the practical side of his calling, he spent four months at Wetzlar, where the imperial law-courts were estab lished. But Goethe's professional duties had only a small share in the eventful years which lay between his return from Strasbourg and that visit to Weimar at the end of 1775, which turned the whole course of his career, and resulted in his permanent attach ment to the Weimar court. Goethe's life in Frankfurt was a round of stimulating literary intercourse; in J. H. Merck (r 74 r-179r ), an army official in the neighbouring town of Darmstadt, he found a friend and mentor, whose irony and common sense served as a corrective to his own exuberance of spirits. Wetzlar brought new friends and another passion, that for Charlotte Buff, the daughter of the Amtmann there—an episode which has been immortalized in W erthers Leiden; again the young poet was obsessed by a love which was this time strong enough to bring him to the brink of that suicide which forms the culmination of the novel. A visit to the Rhine, where new interests and the attractions of Maximiliane von Laroche, a daughter of Wieland's friend, the novelist Sophie von Laroche, brought partial healing, his intense preoccupation with literary work on his return to Frankfurt did the rest. In 1775 Goethe was attracted by still another type of woman, Lili Schone mann, whose mother was the widow of a wealthy Frankfurt banker. A formal betrothal took place, and the beauty of the lyrics which Lili inspired leaves no room for doubt that here was a passion no less genuine than that for Friderike or Charlotte. But the gay, social world in which Lili moved was not congenial to him. A visit to Switzerland in the summer of 1775 may not have weakened his affection for her, but he began to see that mar riage would impose intolerable fetters upon him, and without tragic consequences on either side, the engagement was allowed to lapse. Goethe's departure for Weimar in November brought about the final break.
The period from 1771 to 1775 was, in literary respects, the most productive of the poet's life. It had been inaugurated with Glitz von Berlichingen and a few months later this tragedy was followed by another, Clavigo, peopled with equally living figures, and reflecting even more faithfully than Glitz the emotional ex perience Goethe had gone through in Strasbourg. Again poetic justice is effected on the unfortunate hero who is persuaded to choose his own personal advancement in preference to his duty to the woman he loves; more pointedly than in Getz is this moral enforced ; Clavigo's tragic end is due not so much to this defiance of moral laws, as to his vacillation and want of character. With Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774), the literary precipitate of the author's own experiences in Wetzlar, Goethe succeeded in attracting, as no German had done before him, the attention of Europe. Once more it was the gospel that the world belongs to the strong in will, which lay beneath the surface of this romance. This, however, was not what Goethe's contemporaries read out of it; nor did they appreciate the wide range of spiritual experience which the book contains. Werther was to them merely a senti mental story of a lovelorn youth whose burden becomes too great for him to bear. While Glitz inaugurated the manlier side of the Sturm and Drang literature, Werther was responsible for its sen timental excesses. In Stella, "a drama for lovers" (1776), the poet again reproduced, if with less fidelity than in Werther, cer tain aspects of his own love troubles. A lighter vein is to be ob served in various dramatic satires written at this time such as Goiter, Heiden and Wieland (1774), Hanswursts Hoclizeit, Fast nachtsspiel vom Pater Brey, Satyros, and in the Singspiele, Erwin and Elmire (17 7 5) and Claudine von Villa Bella (1776); while to the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeiger (1772-73), Goethe con tributed vigorous and provocative criticism. The exuberance of the young poet's genius is also to be seen in the many unfinished fragments of this period; at one time we find him occupied with dramas on Caesar and iVlahomet, at another with an epic on Der ewige Jude, and again with a tragedy on Prometheus, of which a magnificent fragment has passed into his works. Greatest of all the torsos of this period, however, was his dramatization of the legend of Faust. Thanks to a manuscript copy of the play in its earliest form—discovered as recently as 1887, and known as the Urfaust—we now know exactly how much of Faust was the im mediate product of the Sturm and Drang, and are able to under stand the intentions with which the young poet began his master piece. Goethe's hero changed with the author's riper experience and with his new conceptions of man's place and duties in the world, but the Gretchen tragedy was taken over into the fin ished poem, practically unaltered, from the earliest draft of the poem. With these wonderful scenes, the most intensely tragic in German literature, Goethe's poetry in this period reaches its climax. Still another important work, however, was conceived, and in large measure written at this time, the drama of Egmont, which was not published until 1788. This work may, to some ex tent, be regarded as complementary to Faust; it presents the lighter, more cheerful and optimistic side of Goethe's outlook on life in these years; Graf Egmont, the most winning and fascinat ing of the poet's heroes, is endowed with that "daimonic" power over the sympathies of men and women, which Goethe himself possessed in so high a degree. But Egmont is but an indifferent drama : it has little plot and its interest depends almost solely on two characters, Egmont himself and Klarchen, the young girl of the people whom he loves.
In Dec. 1774 the young "hereditary prince" of Weimar, Karl August, passing through Frankfurt on his way to Paris, came into touch with Goethe, and invited the poet to visit him in Weimar. In Oct. 1775 the invitation was repeated, and on Nov. 7 Goethe arrived in the little Saxon capital which was to remain his home for the rest of his life. During the first few months in Weimar the poet gave himself up to the pleasures of the moment as unre servedly as his patron ; indeed, the Weimar court even looked upon him for a time as a tempter who led the young duke astray. But the latter, although himself a mere stripling, had implicit faith in Goethe's judgment, and enlisted his services in the gov ernment of the duchy. Goethe was not long in Weimar before he was entrusted with responsible state duties, and events justified the duke's confidence. Goethe displayed as minister of state, both energy and foresight. He interested himself in agriculture, horti culture and mining, which were of paramount importance to the welfare of the duchy, and these interests led to his preoccupation with the natural sciences which took up so much of his time in later years. The inevitable love-interest was also not wanting. As Friderike had fitted into the background of Goethe's Strasbourg life, Lotte into that of Wetzlar, and Lili into the gaieties of Frankfurt, so now Charlotte von Stein, the wife of a Weimar official, was the appropriate muse of Goethe's Weimar life. We possess only the poet's share of his correspondence with Frau von Stein, but it may be inferred from it that, of all Goethe's loves, she was intellectually the most worthy of him. Frau von Stein was a woman of refined literary taste and culture, seven years older than he and the mother of seven children. She dominated the poet's life for 12 years, until his journey to Italy in 1786 i 788. Of other events of this period the most notable were two winter journeys, the first in 1777, to the Harz mountains, the sec ond, two years later, to Switzerland—journeys which gave Goethe opportunity for that introspection and reflection for which his Weimar life had left him little time. On the second of these jour neys he revisited Friderike in Sesenheim, saw Lili, who had mar ried and settled in Strasbourg, and made the personal acquain tance of J. K. Lavater in Zurich.
The literary results of these years cannot be compared with those of the preceding period ; they are virtually limited to a few wonderful lyrics, such as Wanderers Nachtlied, An den Mond, Gesang der Geister uber den Wassern, ballads, such as Der Erl konig, a delicate little drama, Die Geschwister (1776), in which the poet's relations to both Lili and Frau von Stein seem to be reflected, a dramatic satire, Der Triumph der Eynpfindsamkeit (1778), and a number of Singspiele, Lila (1777), Die Fischerin, Scherz, List and Rache, and Jery and Bdtely (178o). But greater works were in preparation. A religious epic, Die Geheimnisse, and a tragedy Elpenor, did not, it is true, advance much further than plans; but in 1777, under the influence of the theatrical experi ments at the Weimar court, Goethe began to write a novel of the theatre on a large scale which was to have borne the title Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung. A manuscript copy of the novel in this early form was discovered as recently as 191o. In 1779 he himself took part in a representation before the court at Etters burg, of his drama 1 phigenie auf Tauris. This 1 phigenie was, how ever, in prose ; in the following year Goethe refashioned it in iam bics, but it was not until he went to Italy that it received the form we know.
In Sept. 1786 Goethe set out from Carlsbad where he had been on holiday—secretly and stealthily, his plans known only to his servant—on that memorable journey to Italy, to which he had looked forward with such intense longing; he could not cross the Alps quickly enough, so impatient was he to set foot in Italy. He travelled by way of Munich, the Brenner and Lago di Garda to Verona and Venice, and from thence to Rome, where he arrived on Oct. 2g, 1786. Here he gave himself up unreservedly to the new impressions which crowded on him, and he was soon at home in the circle of German artists there. In the spring of 1787 he ex tended his journey to Naples and Sicily, returning to Rome in June 1787, where he remained until his final departure for Ger many on April 2, 1788. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of Goethe's Italian journey. He himself regarded it as a kind of climax to his life; never before had he attained such complete un derstanding of his genius arid mission as a poet ; it afforded him a vantage-ground from which he could renew the past and make plans for the future. In Weimar he had already felt that he was no longer in sympathy with the Sturm and Drang, but it was Italy which first initiated him into that neo-classicism which superseded Sturm and Drang in German poetry. To the modern reader, im pressed by Goethe's extraordinary sensitiveness to impressions, it may seem strange that his interests in Italy were so limited; for, of ter all, he had eyes for comparatively little of what Italy had to offer. He went to Rome in Winckelmann's footsteps; it was the antique he sought, and he was interested in the artists of the Renaissance only in so far as he saw in them the heirs of an tiquity. The calm beauty of Greek tragedy is seen in the new iambic version of Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787); the classicism of the Renaissance gives the ground-tone to the drama of Torquato Tasso (179o), in which the conflict of poetic genius with the pro saic world is transmuted into imperishable poetry. Classic, too, in this sense, were the plans of a drama on 1 phigenie auf Delphos and of an epic, Nausikaa. Most interesting of all, however, is the reflection of the classic spirit in works already begun in earlier days, such as Egmont and Faust. The former drama was finished in Italy, the latter was brought a step forward, part of it being published as a Fragment in 1790.
Disappointment in more senses than one awaited Goethe on his return to Weimar. He came back from Italy with a new philoso phy of life, a philosophy at once classic and pagan, and with new ideals of literary beauty. But Germany had not advanced; in 1788 his countrymen were still admirers of that Sturm and Drang from which the poet had fled. The times seemed to him more out of joint than ever, and he withdrew into himself. Even his rela tions to the old friends were changed. Frau von Stein had not known of his flight to Italy until he had been several weeks there; but he looked forward to her welcome on his return. The months of absence, however, the change he had undergone, and, doubtless, lighter loves which had beguiled his leisure in Rome, weakened the Weimar ties; if he left Weimar as Frau von Stein's lover he returned only as her friend; and she naturally resented the change. Goethe, meanwhile, continuing the freer customs to which he had adapted himself in Rome, took into his household Christiane Vulpius (1765-1816), a young girl who could offer him no kind of intellectual companionship. But Christiane gradually filled a gap in the poet's life ; she gave him, unobtrusively, without making demands on him, the comforts of a home. She was not ac cepted by court society; she was indifferent to the fact that even Goethe's intimate friends ignored her; but she, who had suited the poet's whim when he desired to shut himself off from all that might dim the recollection of Italy, became with the years an in dispensable helpmate to him. On the birth in 1789 of his son, Goethe had some thought of legalizing his relations with Chris tiane, but this intention was not realized until 18o6, when the invasion of Weimar by the French made both life and property insecure.
The period of Goethe's life which succeeded his return from Italy was restless and unsettled; relieved of his state duties, he returned in 1790 to Venice, only to be disenchanted with the Italy he had loved so intensely a year or two before. A journey with the duke of Weimar to Breslau followed, and in 1792 he accom panied his master on that campaign against France which ended ingloriously for the German arms at Valmy. In later years Goethe published his account of this Campagne in Frankreich as also of the Belagerung von Mainz, at which he was present in 1793. His literary work naturally suffered under these distractions. Tasso, and the edition of the Schrif ten in which it was to appear, had still to be completed on his return from Italy; the Romisclie Ele gies, perhaps the most Latin in form and content of all his works, were published in 1795, and the V enezianische Epigramme, the result of the second visit to Italy, in 1796. The French Revolu tion, in which all Europe was engrossed, was in Goethe's eyes only another proof that the passing of the old regime meant the abro gation of law and order, and he gave voice to his antagonism to the new democratic principles in the dramas Der Gross-Cophta (1792), Der Biirgergeneral (1793), and in the unfinished frag ments Die Aufgeregten and Das Madchen von Oberkirch. The spirited translation of the epic of Reineke Fuchs (1794) he took up as a relief and an antidote to the perplexing state of the time. Two new interests, however, strengthened the ties between Goethe and Weimar—ties which the Italian journey had threatened to sever : his appointment in 1791 as director of the ducal theatre, a post which he occupied for 2 2 years, and his absorption in scien tific studies. In 1790 he published his important Versuch, die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erkldren, which was even more fundamental for the new science of comparative morphology than his discovery some six years earlier of traces of a structure in the human jaw-bone analogous to the intermaxillary bone in apes; and in 1791 and 1792 appeared two parts of his Beitrage zur Optik.
Meanwhile, however, Goethe had again taken up the novel of the theatre which he had begun years before, with a view to its inclusion in the edition of his Neue Schrif ten (1792-180o). Wil helm Meisters theatralische Sendung became Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre; the novel of purely theatrical interests was widened out to embrace the history of a young man's apprenticeship to life. The change of plan explains, although it may not exculpate, the formlessness and loose construction of the work. A hero, who was probably originally intended to demonstrate the failure of the vacillating temperament when brought face to face with the prob lems of the theatre, proved ill-adapted to demonstrate those pre cepts for the guidance of life with which the Lehrjahre closes; unstable of purpose, Wilhelm Meister is not so much an illustra tion of the author's life-philosophy as a lay-figure on which he demonstrates his views. Wilhelm Meister is, however, a work of extraordinary variety, its scenes ranging from the commonplace realism of the troupe of strolling players to the poetic romanti cism of Mignon and the harper; its pages of intuitive criticism— notably of Hamlet—add to its value as a Bildungsroman in the best sense of that word. Of all Goethe's works, this exerted the most immediate and lasting influence on German literature; it served as a model for the best fiction of the next 3o years.
In completing Wilhelm Meister, Goethe found a sympathetic critic in Schiller, to whom he owed in great measure his renewed interest in poetry. After years of tentative approach on Schiller's part, years in which that poet was not even himself clear that he desired a friendly understanding with Goethe, the favourable moment arrived. It was in June 1794, when Schiller was seeking collaborators for his new periodical Die Horen; and his invitation addressed to Goethe was the beginning of a friendship which con tinued unbroken until the younger poet's death. The friendship of Goethe and Schiller, of which their correspondence is a price less record, had, however, its limitations; it was essentially a lit erary friendship, a certain barrier of personal reserve being main tained to the last. As far as actual work was concerned, Goethe went his own way as he had always been accustomed to do; but the mere fact that he devoted himself with increasing interest to literature was due to Schiller's stimulus. It was Schiller who in duced him to undertake those studies on the nature of epic and dramatic poetry which resulted in the epic of Hermann and Doro thea and the fragment of the Achilleis; without the friendship there would have been no Xenien and no ballads, and it was again, his younger' friend's encouragement which induced Goethe to be take himself once more to the "misty path" of Faust, and bring the first part of that drama to a conclusion.
Goethe's share in the Xenien (1796) may be briefly men tioned. This collection of distichs, written in collaboration with Schiller, was prompted by the indifference and animosity of contemporary criticism, and its disregard for what the two poets regarded as the higher interests of German poetry. The Xenien succeeded as a retaliation on the critics, but the masterpieces with which both poets justified their attack, were in the long run a more effective antidote to the prevailing mediocrity. The col lection of stories, Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten (1797) was unworthy of Goethe's genius, and the translation of Benvenuto Cellini's Life (1796-1797) was only a translation. But in 1798 appeared Hermann and Dorothea, one of Goethe's most perfect poems. It is indeed remarkable—when we consider by how much theoretic discussion the composition of the poem was preceded and accompanied—that it should make upon the reader so simple and unsophisticated an impression ; in this respect it is the triumph of an art that conceals art. Goethe has here taken a simple story of village life, mirrored in it the most pregnant ideas of his time, and presented it with a skill which may well be called Homeric; but he has discriminated with the insight of genius between the Homeric method of reproducing the heroic life of primitive Greece and the same method as adapted to the commonplace happenings of 18th century Germany. In this re spect, he was guided by a forerunner who had depicted the life of the German people in the epic manner and in hexameters, J. H. Voss, the author of Luise. Hardly less imposing in their calm, placid perfection are the poems with which, in friendly rivalry, Goethe seconded the more popular ballads of his friend ; Der Zauberlehrling, Der Gott and die Bayadere, Die Braut von Korinth, Alexis and Dora, Der neue Pausias and Die schone Miillerin—the latter a cycle of poems in the style of the Volkslied —are among the masterpieces of Goethe's poetry. On the other hand, even the friendship with Schiller did not help him to add to his reputation as a dramatist. Die natiirliche Tochter (1803), the first part of trilogy, in which he proposed to embody his ideas of the Revolution on wide canvas, did not get beyond this. Goethe's abstract classic principles, when applied to the swift, direct art of the theatre, were ineffective, and Die natiir liche Tochter, notwithstanding its good theoretic intention, re mains the most lifeless and shadowy of all his dramas. Even less in touch with the living present were the various prologues and Festspiele, such as Paläophron and Neoterpe (1800), Was wir bringen (1802), which in these years he composed for the Weimar theatre.
Goethe's classicism brought him into inevitable antagonism with the new Romantic movement which had been inaugurated in 1798 by the Athendum, edited by the brothers Schlegel. The sharpness of the conflict was, however, blunted by the fact that, without exception, the young Romantic writers looked up to Goethe as their master; they modelled their fiction on Wilhelm Meister; they regarded his lyrics as the highwater mark of Ger man poetry; Goethe, Novalis declared, was the "Statthalter of poetry on earth." With regard to painting and sculpture, however, Goethe felt that a protest was necessary, if the ideas propounded in works like Wackenroder's Herzensergiessungen were not to bring back the confusion of the Sturm and Drang; and, as a re joinder to the Romantic theorists, Goethe, in conjunction with his Swiss friend, Heinrich Meyer (176o-1832), published from 1798 to 1800 an art review, Die Propylaen. In Winckelmann and Sein Jahrhundert (1805) Goethe defended the classical ideal of beauty in art. But in the end he himself proved the greatest enemy to the strict classical doctrine by the publication in 18o8 of the com pleted first part of Faust, a work which was accepted by contem poraries as a triumph of Romantic art. Faust is a patchwork of many colours. With the aid of the vast body of Faust literature which has sprung up in recent years, and the many new docu ments bearing on its history—above all, the so-called Ur f aust, to which reference has already been made—we are able now to dis criminate between the various phases of the work; on the original Sturm and Drang hero of the opening scenes and of the Gretchen tragedy—the brother of Gotz, and Clavigo—is superimposed, in the completed poem, a Faust of calmer moral and intellectual ideals, who corresponds to Hermann and Wilhelm Meister, in Goethe's work. In its first form the poem was concerned with very definite personal problems ; in the years of Goethe's friend ship with Schiller it was widened to embody the higher strivings of 18th-century humanism ; ultimately, in the second part, it became a vast allegory of human life and activity. Thus the ele ments of which Faust is composed were even more difficult to blend than were those of Wilhelm Meister; but the very want of uniformity is one source of the perennial fascination of the tragedy, and has made it in a peculiar degree the national poem of the German people, a mirror in which the national life and poetry are reflected, from the outburst of Sturm and Drang to the tranquil classicism of Goethe's maturity.
The third and final period of Goethe's long life may be said to have begun after Schiller's death. He never again lost touch with literature as he had done in the years which preceded his friend ship with Schiller; but he stood in no active or immediate connec tion with the literary movement of his day. His life moved on comparatively uneventfully. Even the era of Napoleonic oppres sion, disturbed but little his equanimity. Goethe, the cosmopolitan l 'eltbiirger of the 18th century, had himself no very intense feelings of patriotism, and, having seen Germany flourish as a group of small states under enlightened despotisms, he had little confidence in the dreamers of 1813 who hoped to see the glories of Barbarossa's empire revived. Napoleon, moreover, he regarded not as the scourge of Europe, but as the defender of civilization against the barbarism of the Slays ; and in the f amous interview between the two men at Erfurt the poet's admiration was reciprocated by the French conqueror. Thus Goethe had no great sympathy for the war of liberation which in 1813 kindled young hearts from one end of Germany to the other ; and when the national enthusiasm rose to its highest pitch he buried himself in those optical and morphological studies, which, with increasing years, occupied more and more of his time.
The events and writings of the last 25 years of Goethe's life may be briefly summarized. In 1805, as we have seen, he suffered an irreparable loss in the death of Schiller ; in 1806, Christiane became his legal wife, and to the same year belongs the magnifi cent tribute to his dead friend, the Epilog zu Schillers Glocke. Two new friendships about this time kindled in the poet some thing of the passion of younger days. Bettina von Arnim came into touch with Goethe in 1807, and her Brie f wechsel Goethes mit einent Kinde (published in 183 5) is, in its mingling of truth and fiction, one of the most delightful products of the Romantic mind; but the episode was of less importance in Goethe's eyes than Bettina would have us believe. On the other hand, his in terest in Minna Herzlieb, f oster-daughter of the publisher From mann in Jena, was of a warmer nature, and has left its traces on the novel, Die tiV ahlverwandtscha f ten and on his sonnets.
In 1808, as we have seen, appeared the first part of Faust, which in 1809 was followed by the novel just mentioned. That novel, hardly less than the drama, effected a change in the public attitude towards the poet. Since the beginning of the century the conviction had been gaining ground that Goethe's mission was accomplished, that the day of his leadership was over; but here were two works which not merely re-established his position, but proved that the old poet was in sympathy with the movement of letters, and keenly alive to the change of ideas which the new cen tury had brought with it. The intimate study of four minds, which forms the subject of the IVahlverwandtschaften, was an essay in a new type of psychological fiction and pointed out the way for developments of the German novel after the stimulus of Wilhelm Meister had exhausted itself. Less important than Die Walilverwandtschaften was Pandora (181o), the final product of Goethe's classicism and the most uncompromisingly classical and allegorical of all his works. And in 181o, too, appeared his treatise Zur Farbenlehre. In the following year the first volume of ' his autobiography was published under the title Alts meinem Leben, Dichtung and TVahrheit. The second and third volumes of this work followed in 1812 and 1814; the fourth, bringing the story of his life up to the close of the Frankfurt period in 1833, after his death. Goethe felt, even late in life, too intimately bound up with Weimar to discuss in detail his early life there, and he shrank from carrying his biography beyond the year 1775. But a num ber of other publications—descriptions of travel, such as the Italienische Reise (1816-17), the materials for a continuation of Dichtung and IVahrlieit collected in Tag-und Jalireshef to (1830) are important additions to the documents of his life. Meanwhile, no less valuable biographical materials were accumulating in his diaries, his voluminous correspondence and his conversations, as recorded by J. P. Eckermann, the chancellor F. von Muller and F. Soret. Several periodical publications, fiber Kunst and Alter tum (1816-32), Zur Naturwissenscliaf t iiberliaupt (1817-24), Zur Morpliologie (1817-24), bear witness to the extraordinary width of Goethe's interests in these years. Art, science, literature—little escaped his ken—and that not merely in Germany : English writ ers, Byron, Scott and Carlyle, Italians like Manzoni, French sci entists and poets, could all depend on friendly words of apprecia tion and encouragement from Weimar.
With Westostlicher Diwan (1819), Goethe had another sur prise in store for his contemporaries; this is a collection of lyrics, matchless in form and more concentrated in their apophtheg matic expression than those of earlier days ; it was suggested by a German translation of the Persian poet, Hafiz. And, again, an ac tual passion—that for Marianne von Willemer, whom he met in 1814 and 1815—had rekindled in him the lyric fire. Meanwhile the years were thinning the ranks of Weimar society : Wieland, the last of Goethe's greater literary contemporaries, died in 1813, his wife in 1816, Charlotte von Stein in 1827 and Duke Karl August in i828. Goethe's retirement from the direction of the theatre in 1817 meant for him a break with the literary life of the day. In 1822 a passion for a young girl, Ulrike von Levetzow, whom he met at Marienbad, inspired the fine Trilogie der Leiden sclia f t, and between 1821 and 1829 appeared the long-expected and long-promised continuation of Wilhelm Meister, Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjalire. The latter work, however, was a disap pointment : perhaps it could not have been otherwise. Goethe had lost the thread of his romance, and it was difficult for him to find it again. Problems of the relation of the individual to society and industrial questions were to have formed the theme of the lVan derjahre; but after the French Revolution these problems had en tered on a new phase and demanded a method of treatment which it was not easy for the old poet to acquire. Thus his intentions were only partially carried out, and the volumes were filled out by irrelevant stories, written at widely different periods.
But the crowning achievement of Goethe's literary life was the completion of Faust. The poem had accompanied him since early manhood and was the repository for the 'fullest "confession" of his life; it is the poetic epitome of his experience. The second part is far removed from the impressive realism of the Ur f aust or even the classicism of the first part. It is a phantasmagory; a drama the actors in which are not creatures of flesh and blood, but shadows in an unreal world of allegory. The lover of Gretchen had, as far as poetic continuity is concerned, disappeared with the close of the first part. In the second part it is virtually a new Faust who, accompanied by a new Mephistopheles, goes out into a world that is not ours. Yet behind the elusive allegories of an imperial court with its financial difficulties, behind the classical IValpurgisnacht, the fantastic creation of the Homunculus, the noble Helena episode and the impressive mystery-scene of the close, where the centenarian Faust finally triumphs over the powers of evil, there lies a philosophy of life, a ripe wisdom born of experience, such as no other modern European poet has given us. Faust has been well called the "divine comedy" of 18th century humanism.
The second part of Faust forms a worthy close to the life of Germany's greatest man of letters, who died in Weimar on March 22, 183 2. His was the last of those universal minds which have been able to compass all domains of human activity and knowl edge ; for he stood on the brink of an era of rapidly expanding knowledge which has made forever impossible the universality of interest and sympathy which distinguished him. As a poet, his fame has undergone many vicissitudes since his death, ranging from the indifference df the "Young German" school to the en thusiastic appreciation of the closing decades of the 19th century —an enthusiasm to which we owe the Weimar Goethe-Gesell sclia f t (founded in 1885) and a vast literature dealing with the poet's life and work. That Goethe is Germany's greatest poet and the master of her classical literature has never been seriously questioned. The intrinsic value of his poetic work, regarded apart from his personality, may be smaller in proportion to its bulk than is the case with some lesser German poets and with the great poets of other literatures. But Goethe was a new type of literary man; a poet whose supreme greatness lay in his subjec tivity. Only a small fraction of his poetical work sprang from what might be called a purely artistic and objective impulse; by far the larger—and the better—part is the immediate precipitate of his thought, emotions, and experiences.
It is as a lyric poet that Goethe's supremacy is least likely to be challenged ; he has given his nation, whose highest literary ex pression has in all ages been essentially lyric, its greatest songs. No other German poet has succeeded in attuning feeling, senti ment and thought so peffectly to the music of words as he ; none has expressed so fully that subtle spirituality in which the strength of German lyrism lies. Goethe's dramas, on the other hand, have not, in the eyes of his nation, succeeded in holding their own be side Schiller's; but the reason is rather because Goethe refused to be bound by the conventions of the theatre, than because he was deficient in the cunning of the dramatist. For, as a creator and in terpreter of human character, Goethe is without a rival among modern poets, and there is not one of his plays that does not con tain scenes and characters which bear indisputable testimony to this mastery. Faust is Germany's most national drama, and it remains perhaps for the theatre of the future to prove itself ca pable of popularizing psychological masterpieces like Tasso and Iphigenie. As a novelist, Goethe has suffered most by the lapse of time. The Sorrows of Werther no longer maintains its hold upon us, and even Wilhelm Meister and Die W ahlverwandtscha f ten re quire more understanding for the conditions under which they were written than do Faust or Egmont. Goethe could fill his prose with rich wisdom, but he was the perfect artist only in verse.
Less attention is nowadays paid to Goethe's work in other fields, work which he himself in some cases prized more highly than his poetry. It is only as an illustration of his manysidedness and his manifold activity that we now turn to his achievement as a statesman, as a practical political economist, as a theatre-direc tor. His art-criticism is symptomatic of a phase of European taste to which the growing individualism of Romanticism was repug nant. His scientific studies and discoveries now possess only an historical interest. We marvel at the obstinacy with which he, with inadequate mathematical knowledge, opposed the Newtonian theory of light and colour ; and at his championship of "Neptun ism," the theory of aqueous origin, as opposed to "Vulcanism," that of igneous origin of the earth's crust. Of real importance was, on the other hand, his foreshadowing of the Darwinian the ory in his works on the metamorphosis of plants and on biological morphology. Indeed, the deduction to be drawn from Goethe's contributions to botany and anatomy is that he, as few of his con temporaries, possessed that type of scientific mind which, in the 19th century, has made for progress; he was Darwin's predecessor by virtue of his enunciation of what has now become one of the commonplaces of natural science—organic evolution. Modern, too, was the outlook of the aging poet on the changing social con ditions of the age and on its new political ideals; unexpectedly sympathetic his attitude towards modern industry, which steam was just beginning to establish on a new basis. The Europe of his later years was very different from that of the enlightened autoc racies of the 18th century, in which he had spent his best years; yet Goethe was at home in it too.
From the philosophic movement, in which Schiller and the Romanticists were deeply involved, Goethe stood apart. Com paratively early in life he had found in Spinoza the philosopher who responded to his needs; and for the subtle dialectic of later thinkers he had neither liking nor understanding. As a convinced realist he took his standpoint on nature and experience, and could afford to look on with indifference at the battles of the metaphysi cians. Of Kant's work, however, he was not ignorant, and under Schiller's stimulus he learned from him; but of the younger thinkers, only Schelling, whose mystic nature-philosophy was akin to Spinoza's thought, touched a sympathetic chord in his nature. As a moralist and a guide to the conduct of life—an aspect of Goethe's work which Carlyle, viewing him through the coloured glasses of Fichtean idealism, emphasized and interpreted not al ways justly—Goethe was a powerful force on German life in years of intellectual and political depression. It is difficult even still to get beyond the maxims of practical wisdom he scattered so liberally through his works and the lessons to be learned from Meister and Faust; the calm optimism which never deserted Goethe, and was so completely justified by the tenor of his life, is still an uplifting element of his thought. If the philosophy of Spinoza provided the poet with a religion which made individual creeds and dogmas seem unnecessary, Leibnitz's doctrine of pre destinism supplied the foundations for his faith in the divine pur pose of human life.
Goethe's many-sided activity is a tribute to the greatness of his mind and personality; we may see in him merely the embodiment of his particular age, or we may regard him as a poet "for all time" ; but with one opinion all who have felt the power of Goethe's genius are in agreement—the opinion which was con densed in Napoleon's often cited words, uttered after the meeting at Erfurt: Voila un homme ! Of all modern men of genius, Goethe is the most universal. It is the full, rich humanity of his per sonality—not the art behind which the artist disappears, or the definite pronouncements of the thinker or the teacher—that con stitutes his claim to a place in the front rank of men of letters. His life was his greatest work.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-(a) Collected Works, Diaries, Correspondence, ConBibliography.-(a) Collected Works, Diaries, Correspondence, Con- versations. The following editions of Goethe's writings appeared in the poet's lifetime: Schriften (Leipzig, 1787-90) ; Neue Schriften (1792-1800) ; Werke (13 vols., Stuttgart, 18o6-10) ; Werke (26 vols., Stuttgart, 1815-22) ; Werke (Vollstandige Ausgabe letzter Hand) (4o vols., Stuttgart, 1827-30). Goethe's Nachgelassene Werke appeared as a continuation of this edition in 20 volumes (Stuttgart, 1832-42) . These were followed by several editions of Goethe's Samtliche Werke, published by Cotta of Stuttgart. The first critical edition with notes was published by Hempel, Berlin, 1868-79. The standard edition is that published at Weimar between 1887 and 1919; it is divided into four sections: I. W ke; II. Naturwissenschaftliche Werke; III. Tage biicher; IV. Briefe. Of other recent editions the most noteworthy are: Samtliche Werke (J ubilcrums-Ausgabe) , ed. E. von der Hellen (Stutt gart, 1902-7) ; Werke, ed. K. Heinemann (Leipzig, 5900 ff.), the cheap edition of the Samtliche Werke, ed. L. Geiger (Leipzig, 1901), and the "Propylaen-Ausgabe" (Munich, 1909 ff.) . There are also innumerable editions of selected works; reference need only be made here to the useful collection of the early writings and letters by M. Bernays, Der junge Goethe (Leipzig, 1875 ; new ed., 1909-11) . A French translation of Goethe's tEuvres completes, by J. Porchat, ap peared at Paris in 1860-63. There is, as yet, no uniform English edition, but Goethe's chief works have all been frequently translated and most of them will be found in Bohn's Standard Library. The definitive edition of Goethe's diaries and letters is that forming Sections III. and IV. of the Weimar edition. Collections of selected letters based on the Weimar edition have been published by E. von der Hellen and by P. Stein (1901-24). Of the many separate collections of Goethe's correspondence mention may be made of the Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller and Goethe, edited by Goethe himself (1828-29), by H. G. Graf and A. Leitzmann (1923) ; Eng. trans. ; Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe and Zelter (1833 34) ; Eng. trans. (1887) ; Briefwechsel mit Bettina von Arnim, ed. R. Steig (1922) ; Goethes Briefe an Frau von Stein, ed. A. Scholl (1848-51) ; ed. J. Wahle (1899-190o) ; Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe and K. F. von Reinhard (1850) ; Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe and Knebel (1851) ; Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe and Staatsrat Schultz (1853) ; Briefwechsel des Herzogs Karl August mit Goethe (1863 ; ed. H. Wahl, 1915-18) ; Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe and Kaspar Graf von Sternberg (1866) ; Briefwechsel mit Christiane, ed. H. G. Graf (1923) ; Briefwechsel mit H. Meyer, ed. M. Hecker (1920) ; Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Korrespondenz, and Goethes Briefwechsel mit den Gebriidern von Humboldt (ed. F. T. Bratranek (1874-76) ; Goethes and Carlyles Briefwechsel (1887), also in English ; Goethe and die Romantik, ed. C. Schiiddekopf and O. Walzel (1898-99) ; Goethe and Lavater, ed. H. Funck (19oi) ; Goethe and Osterreich, ed. A. Sauer (1902-4) . Besides the correspondence with Schiller and Zelter, Bohn's library contains a translation of Early and Miscellaneous Letters, by E. Bell (1884) . The chief collections of Goethe's con versations are: J. P. Eckermann, Gesprache mit Goethe (58,36; vol. iii., also containing conversations with Soret, 1848 ; ed. H. H. Houben, 1926 ; Eng. trans., 185o) . Cf. J. Petersen, Die Entstehung der Ecker mannschen Gesprache (1926) . The complete conversations with Soret have been published in German translation by C. A. H. Burkhardt (1905) ; Goethes Unterhaltunaen mit dem Kanzler F. von Muller (1870) . Goethe's collected Gesprache were published by W. von Biedermann (1889-96) ; new ed. 19og-I I .
(b) Biography.—Goethe's autobiography, Aus meinem Leben: Dich tung and Wahrheit, appeared in three parts between 1811 and 1814•, part iv. in 1833 (Eng. trans., 1846) ; it is supplemented by other biographical writings, as the Italienische Reise, Tag- and Jahreshe f te, etc. The following are the more important biographies: H. Doling, Goethes Leben (1828, etc.) ; H. Viehoff, Goethes Leben (1847-54; 5th ed. 1887) ; J. W. Schafer, Goethes Leben (T851; 3rd ed., 1877) ; G. H. Lewes, The Life and Works of Goethe (1855, etc. ; Ger. trans., J. Frese ; a shorter biography was published by Lewes in 1873 under the title The Story of Goethe's Life) ; W. Mezieres, W. Goethe, les ćuvres expliquees par la vie (1872-73) ; A. Bossert, Goethe (1872-73) ; K. Goedeke, Goethes Leben and Schriftea (1874; 2nd ed., 1877) ; H. Grimm, Goethe: Vorlesungen (1876; 8th ed., 1903; Eng. trans. 1880) ; A. Hayward, Goethe (1878) ; H. H. Boyesen, Goethe and Schiller, their Lives and Works (1879) ; H. Diintzer, Goethes Leben (188o; 2nd ed., 1883 ; Eng. trans. 1883) ; A. Baumgartner, Goethe, sein Leben and seine Werke (1885; 4th ed., 1923-25) ; J. Sime, Life of Goethe (1888) ; K. Heinemann, Goethes Leben and Werke (1889 ; new ed., 1916) ; R. M. Meyer, Goethe (1894 ; 3rd ed., 1904) ; A. Bielschowsky, Goethe, sein Leben and seine Werke (1895-1903 ; over 3o editions; Eng. trans. 1905-8) ; G. Witkow ski, Goethe (1899) ; H. G. Atkins, J. W. Goethe (1904) ; H. S. Cham berlain, Goethe (1912) ; F. Gundolf, Goethe (1916; 12th ed., 1925) ; W. Bode, Goethes Leben (1917 ff.) ; P. Hume Brown, Life of Goethe (192o) ; E. Ludwig, Goethe (192o-2I) ; G. Brandes, Goethe (Ger. trans., 1922) ; J. G. Robertson, Goethe (1927).
Of writings on special periods and aspects of Goethe's life the more important are as follows (the titles are arranged as far as possible in the chronological sequence of the poet's life) : K. Heinemann, Goethes Mutter (1891 ; 6th ed., 1900) ; P. Bastier, La Mere de Goethe (1902) ; Briefe der Frau Rat (2nd ed., 1905) ; F. Ewart, Goethes Vater (1899) ; G. Witkowski, Cornelia, die Schwester Goethes (1903) ; P. Besson, Goethe, sa soeur et ses amies (1898) ; H. Diintzer, Frauen bilder aus Goethes Jugendzeit (1852) ; W. von Biedermann, Goethe and Leipzig (1865) ; P. F. Lucius, Friderike Brion (1878; 3rd ed., 1904) ; A. Bielschowsky Friderike Brion (188o) ; F. E. von Diirck heim, Lili's Bild geschichtlich entworfen (1879; 2nd ed., 1894) ; W. Herbst, Goethe in Wetzlar (1881) ; H. Gloel, Goethes Wetzlarer Zeit (1911) ; A. Diezmann, Goethe and die lustige Zeit in Weimar (1857; 4th ed., 1906) ; H. Diintzer, Goethe and Karl August (1859-64 ; 2nd ed., 1888) ; Aus Goethes Freundeskreise (1868) ; Charlotte von Stein (1874) ; E. Hoefer, Goethe and Charlotte von Stein (1878 ; 7th ed., 1922) ; W. Bode, Charlotte von Stein (1909) ; J. Haarhaus, Auf Goethes Spuren in Italien (1896-98) ; O. Harnack, Zur Nachgeschichte der italienischen Reise (1890) ; H. Grimm, Schiller and Goethe (Essays, 1858; 3rd ed., 1884) ; G. Berlit, Goethe and Schiller im personlichen Verkehre, nach brieflichen Mitteilungen von H. Voss (1895) ; S. Waetzoldt, Goethe and die Romantik (1888) ; C. A. H. Burkhardt, Das Repertoire des weimarischen Theaters unter Goethes Leitung (1891) ; J. Wahle, Das Weimarer Hoftheater unter Goethes Leitung (1892) ; O. Harnack, Goethe in der Epoche seiner Vollendung (3rd ed., 1905) ; J. Barbey d'Aurevilly, Goethe et Diderot (188o) ; A. Fischer, Goethe and Natoleon (1899 ; 2nd ed., 190o) ; J. G. Robertson, Goethe and Byron (1925) ; R. Steig, Goethe and die Gebrihder Grimm (1892).
(c) Criticism.—H. G. Graf, Goethe caber seine Dichtungen (1901 14) ; J. W. Braun, Goethe im Urteile seiner Zeitgenossen (1883-85) ; T. Carlyle, Essays on Goethe (1828-32) ;. X. Marmier, Etudes sur Goethe (1835) ; W. von Biedermann, Goethe-Forschungen (1879-99) ; J. Minor and A. Sauer, Studien zur Goethe-Philologie (188o) ; H. Diintzer, Abhandlungen zu Goethes Leben and Werken (1881) ; A. Scholl, Goethe in Hauptziigen seines Lebens and Wirkens (1882) ; V. Hehn, Gedanken iiber Goethe (1884, 7th ed., 1909) ; W. Scherer, Auf sdtze caber Goethe (1886) ; Sir J. R. Seeley, Goethe reviewed after Sixty Years (1894) ; E. Dowden, New Studies in Literature (1895) ; E. Rod, Essai sur Goethe (1898) ; M. Morris, Goethe-Studien (1897-98; 2nd ed., 1902) ; A. Luth. r, Goethe, sechs Vortrdge (1905) ; R. Saitschik, Goethes Charakter (1898) ; W. Bode, Goethes Lebenskunst (1900; 3rd ed., 1903) ; by the same, Goethes ..Goethes (19o1) ; T. Vollbehr, Goethe and die bildende Kunst (1895) ; E. Maas, Goethe and die Antike (1912) ; E. Lichtenberger, Etudes sur les poesies lyriques de Goethe (1878) ; T. Achelis, Grundziige der Lyrik Goethes (1900) ; B. Litzmann, Goethes Lyrik (1903) ; R. Riemann, Goethes Romantechnik (1901) ; R. Virchow, Goethe als Naturforscher (1861) ; E. Caro, La Philosophie de Goethe (1866; 2nd ed., 1870) ; R. Steiner, Goethes Weltanschauung (1897) ; E. A. Boucke, Goethes Weltanschauung (1897) ; F. Siebeck, Goethe als Denker (1902) ; F. Baldensperger, Goethe en France (1904) ; C. Schrempf, Goethes Lebensanschauung (1905-7) ; H. Loiseau, L'Evolution morale de Goethe (1911) ; B. Croce, Goethe (Bari, 1919 ; Eng. trans., 1923) ; K. J. Obenauer, Goethe in seinem Verhiiltnis zur Religion (1921) ; P. Fischer, Goethes Altersweis heit (1921) ; H. A. Korff, Die Lebensidee Goethes (1925) .
More special treatises dealing with individual works are the follow ing: W. Scherer, Aus Goethes Friuhzeit (1879) ; R. Weissenfels, Goethe im Sturm and Drang, vol. i. (1894) ; W. Wilmanns, Quellenstudien zu Goethes Gotz von Berlichingen (1874) ; J. W. Appell, Werther and seine Zeit (1855; 4th ed., 1896) ; E. Schmidt, Richardson, Rousseau and Goethe (1875) ; E. Schmidt, Goethes Faust in ursprunglicher Ges talt (1887; 6th ed., 1905) ; J. Collin, Goethes Faust in seiner dltesten Gestalt (1896) ; F. T. Bratranek, Goethes Egmont and Schillers Wallenstein (1862) ; C. Schuchardt, Goethes italienische Reise (1862) ; H. Diintzer, I phigenie auf Tauris; die drei dltesten Bearbeitungen (1854) ; F. Kern, Goethes Tasso (1890) ; K. Fischer, Goethes Tasso (1890; 3rd ed., 1900) ; J. Schubart, Die philosophischen Grundgedan ken in Goethes Wilhelm Meister (18q6) ; M. Wundt, Goethes Wilhelm Meister (1913) ; E. Boas, Schiller and Goethe im Xenienkampf (1851) ; E. Schmidt and B. Suphan, Xenien 5796, nach den Handschriften (1893) ; W. von Humboldt, Asthetische Versuche: Hermann and Dorothea (1799) ; V. Hehn, Ober Goethes Hermann and Dorothea (1893) ; A. Fries, Quellen and Komposition der Achilleis (1901) ; K. Alt, Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte von Dichtung and Wahrhezt (1898) ; A. Jung, Goethes Wanderjahre and die wichtigsten Fragen des 19. Jahrhunderts (1854) ; F. Kreyssig, Vorlesungen fiber Goethes Faust (1866) ; the editions of Faust by G. von Loeper (1879 ; new ed., 1900) ; K. J. Schroer (1881 ; 5th ed., 1915-17) ; G. Witkowski (1909 ; 3rd ed., 1924) , and R. Petsch (192 5) ; K. Fischer, Goethes Faust (1878; 5th ed., 1904) : O. Pniower, Goethes Faust, Zeugnisse and Excurse zu seiner Entstehungsgeschichte (1899) ; J. Minor, Goethes Faust, Entstehungsgeschichte and Erkldrung (1901) ; E. Traumann, Goethes Faust (1913-14).
(d) Bibliographical Works, Goethe-Societies Hirzel, Ver zeichnis einer Goethe-Bibliothek (1884), to which G. von Loeper and W. von Biedermann have supplied supplements. Goedeke's Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung (vol. iv., 3rd ed., 1910-13) ; and the bibliographies in the Goethe-Jahrbuch (1880-1913) . Also K. Hoyer, Zur Ein f iihrung in die Goethe-Literatur (1904) . On Goethe in England see E. Oswald, Goethe in England and America (1899; 2nd ed., 1909) ; J. M. Carre, Goethe en Angleterre (1921) ; W. Heinemann, A Bibliographical List of the English Translations and Annotated Editions of Goethe's Faust (1886) .
A Goethe-Gesellschaft was founded at Weimar in 1885 ; its pub lications include the annual Goethe-Jahrbuch (188o-1913) ; now Jahrbuch der Goethe-Gesellschaft (1914 ff.), and a series of Goethe Schriften. A Goethe-Verein has existed in Vienna since 1887, and an English Goethe society since 1886 (Publications, 1880-1910; new series 1924 ff.) . A complete list of the literature on Goethe up to 1913 is given in Goedeke's: Grundriss der deutschen Literaturgeschichte, 3rd ed. vol. 4. (J. G. R.)