The coining of Goethe to Weimar is a turning point in the literary life of Germany. From 1776 Goethe's influence begins to he paramount wher ever German is spoken. Weimar was already what it has remained till now, a pleasant resi dence for the cultured. Goethe made it the Athens of Germany, aided by Karl August and his mother, Amalie, hindered at first by Karl's prim wife, Luise, and by a jealous group of courtiers. Goethe was received in Weimar with an effervescence of enthusiastic appreciation. For a time he led the Court a frolic dance. but pres ently settled down to be a prudent and blameless man of affairs, and found in this courtly life and the intimate contact with aristocratic society much to widen his mind and give his judgment a balanced calm. For the next ten years (1776 86) he wrote little save occasional verses and dramatic trifles, of which the chief is Die Ge schwister. He began work on Wilhelm Meister in 1777. Study of natural science, mineralogy, geology, osteology, intercourse with Herder, Wie land, and others, and his interest in the mines at Ilmenau claimed his time, and he made a jour ney to the mining district of the Harz on their account, bringing back impressions that were of use, not only aCIlmenau, but for his Faust. He managed the Court Theatre (with some intermis sions, till 1817) and the War Department, super intended the roads and bridges, accompanied Karl August on a journey to Switzerland, from which he gathered literary impressions and above all he maintained a platonic correspondence and inter course with Charlotte von Stein, a lady of thirty three, and mother of seven children, who, in mak ing his life 'an enduring resignation,' gave his nature more refinement and self-control for the days of his emancipation. For when he had learned from her what she had to teach, he began to chafe both at this relation and at his Court life, until in 1786 he asked of Karl August un limited leave of absence, that he might visit Italy. The literary precipitate of this decade is almost wholly lyric or epigrammatic; but he car ried across the Alps the uncompleted Iphigenie (which in a prose form had been acted in 1779), Egmont, Tasso, and Faust—works not to be fin ished in the spirit of their inception.
For the Italian journey marks the most im portant epoch of Goethe's literary and moral de velopment. All the work that follows is radically distinguished from all that went before. Here Goethe found at last his moral balance. From 1788 till his death he went his way among men with the serenity of perfect self-possession. He went first to Verona, then to Padua and Venice, where he stayed two weeks, and then turned southward to Ferrara and across the Apennines to Florence, where he lingered but three hours, so eager was the impetuous traveler to see Rome (October 29, 1786). Here the poetic stream that had long flowed so scantily was unsealed. By mid-January, 1787, he had turned Tphigenie into classic iambics, as a first fruit of the new in fluences, and was so sure that he was on the right track that he determined to do the same service for Tasso on a journey to Naples and Sicily, from which he returned in June.
In Rome he now remained nearly a year, per fecting Iphigenie, finishing Egmont, working on Tasso and Faust, and prosecuting zealously artis tic and botanical studies. He also lived connu bially with a Roman girl, and the connection seems to have revealed to him a joy of life dis sociated from the sentimentality that had charac terized his previous relations, especially that with Charlotte von Stein. This new moral atti
tude is reflected in the Romische Elegien (1788), an epithalamium addressed to Christiane Vul pius, a young woman of Wei as, with whom he lived quasi-maritally from 1 till their mar riage in 1806, and afterwar till her death (1816), to his own satisfaction, t to the scan dal of the ladies of Weimar a the vexation of Bettina von Arnim-Brentano. ecording to Goethe's correspondence with Chris ne. but cently published (Goethe Gesellscha. Weimar), she was the true and faithful compa on of his after life, loving and beloved. His mother treated her from the first as 'her daughter,' and she earned, after the battle of Jena, the honor of a public rec ognition of her place by preserving, at the risk of her life, Goethe's house from French marauders.
Goethe brought to Weimar (June 18, 1788) Iphigenie and Egmont, with Tasso almost in its present form, and an essentially altered concep tion of Faust. Iphigenie vas planned in 1776, and written in prose in 1779. It was a literary projection of his relation to Charlotte von Stein. Orestes recovers a clear mind in the angelic pres ence of his sister, as Goethe imagined he would do if Charlotte would 'be a sister' to him. Such ethics were unripe and unnatural, and the play lacks action. It was old work made over, and its exquisite versification did not suffice to make it harmonize with his new spirit. There is the same discord of old and new in the prose drama Egmont, 'the weak, aristocratic twin brother of Gotz' (Hermann Grimm). Tasso has more unity of conception and execution, though it is sadly deficient in dramatic action, and, indeed, was not put on the stage for eighteen years after its publication (1790). It, too, in its pre-Italian prose form (1780-81) reflected Goethe 'caught in the snare' of Charlotte von Stein, a situation that in 1786 had ceased to have living interest for him. He concentrated his thought on its form, and made the iambics of Tasso so perfect that Schlegel said their very beauty made them unsuited to dramatic dialogue. He also changed the close to conform to his new ethical position.
Goethe's first homogeneous work after his re turn from Italy was the Romische Elegien, in the spirit, he said, of Tibullus, Catullus, and Proper tins, the most antique in thought of modern Ger man verse. The frankly naïve sensualism that they exhibit, borne out by his conduct, caused Goethe a temporary loss of social popularity in the 'imperfectly monogamous' society of Weimar, as well as a breach with Frau von Stein. He had outgrown her and the Weimar circle. Even his literary prOminence seemed threatened. In Gotz and Werther he had led his countrymen. Now he had passed beyond them in his deepened esthetic insight. For a time and until rejuve nated by the friendship of Schiller, he gave his time largely to scientific studies, to which he brought not only an original mind, but almost a seer's vision. In 1784 he had discovered the in termaxillary bone by' a method that foreshadowed the science of comparative anatomy. In his essay Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen, he became, says Esenbeck, 'the tender father' of a just-born science; his experiments in optics were ingenious and valuable, though his theory of colors was false, and he was first to perceive the vertebrate character of the human skull. Thus, while his contemporary botanists and anatomists were wan dering aimlessly or making dry registration of facts, he gave them ideas whose fruitfulness is not yet exhausted. From these studies Goethe was won back to literature bythe friendship of Schiller.