Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 1749-1832
German poet, dramatist, scientist and court official, one of the greatest figures in European literature

Goethe was born in Frankfurt-am-Main, the son of a lawyer. He was educated privately and reluctantly studied law at Leipzig (1765-68); however, a love affair inspired him to write his first two plays, Die Laune des Verliebten (1767, 'The Beloved's Whim') and Die Mitschuldigen (staged 1787, 'The Accomplices'). After a protracted illness he continued his law studies at Strasbourg from 1770 where he came under the influence of Johann Herder, the pioneer of German Romanticism.

In 1771 he qualified and returned to Frankfurt, where he became a newspaper critic and captured the spirit of German nationalism in an early masterpiece of drama, G�tz von Berlichingen (1773), which epitomized the man of genius at odds with society. Faust was begun, and Goethe followed up his first triumph with his self-revelatory cautionary novel, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774, 'The Sorrows of Young Werther'), which mirrored his own doomed affair with Charlotte Buff, the fianc�e of a friend. Clavigo, a Hamlet-like drama, followed in the same vein, based on Beaumarchais' M�moires. A romance with Lili Sch�nemann inspired the love lyrics of 1775.

In the autumn Goethe (perhaps surprisingly) accepted the post of court-official and privy councillor (1776) to the young Duke of Weimar. He conscientiously carried out all his state duties, interested himself in a geological survey, and exerted a steadying influence on the inexperienced duke. His 10-year relationship with the young widow, Charlotte von Stein, served as a psychological support, but did little to help his development as a creative writer.

Goethe also took an interest in the life sciences; in 1782 he extended his researches to comparative anatomy, discovered the intermaxillary bone in man (1784), and formulated a vertebral theory of the skull. In botany he developed a theory that the leaf represented the characteristic form of which all the other parts of a plant are variations, and made unsuccessful attempts to refute Isaac Newton's theory of light. He wrote a novel on theatrical life, Wilhelm Meisters Theatralische Sendung ('Wilhelm Meister's Theatrical Mission', not discovered until 1910), which contains the enigmatic poetry of Mignon's songs, epitomizing the best in German romantic poetry, including the famous 'Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt' ('Only He Who Knows Longing'). His visits to Italy (1786-88, 1790) cured him of his emotional dependence on Charlotte von Stein and contributed to a greater preoccupation with poetical form, as in the severely classical verse version of his drama, Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787), and the more modern Egmont (1788) and Torquato Tasso (1790).

His love for classical Italy, coupled with his passion for Christiane Vulpius, whom he married in 1806, found full expression in R�mische Elegien (1795, 'Roman Elegies'). From 1794 he formed a friendship with Schiller, with whom he conducted an interesting correspondence on aesthetics (1794-1805) and carried on a friendly contest in the writing of ballads which resulted in Schiller's part in Das Leid von der Glocke and Goethe's in the epic idyll Hermann und Dorothea (1798). They wrote against philistinism in the literary magazine Horen.

Goethe's last great period saw the prototype of the favourite German literary composition, the Bildungsroman in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1796, 'Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship) continued as Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1821-29, 'Wilhelm Meister's Travels'). Wilhelm Meister was to become the idol of the German Romantics, of whom Goethe increasingly disapproved. He disliked their enthusiasm for the French Revolution, which he satirized in a number of works, including the epic poem Reineke Fuchs (1794), based on a medieval theme, and the drama Die nat�rliche Tochter (1803, 'The Natural Daughter'), and their disregard for style, which he attempted to correct by example in his novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809, 'The Elective Affinities') and the collection of lyrics, inspired by Marianne von Willemer, West-�stlicher Divan (1819), an attempt to marry East with West.

Goethe's masterpiece, however, is his version of Christopher Marlowe's drama of Faust, on which he worked for most of his life. Begun in 1775, the first part was published after much revision and Schiller's advice in 1808, and the second part in 1832. Faust, the disillusioned scholar, deserts his 'ivory tower' to seek happiness in real life, and makes a pact with Satan, who brings about the love-affair, seduction and death of Gretchen, an ordinary village girl, and subtly brings Faust by other such escapades to the brink of moral degradation.

Goethe took little part in the political upheavals of his time, although he saw in Napoleon I the saviour of European civilization; Napoleon made a point of meeting Goethe at the congress of Erfurt (1803). When he died, Goethe was buried near Schiller in the ducal vault at Weimar.

Bibliography: Goethe's autobiography is From My Life: poetry and truth (1811-14). See also Benjamin C Sax, Images of Identity (1987); T Reed, Goethe (1984); Victor Lange (ed), A Collection of Critical Essays (1967); George H Lewes, The Life and Works of Goethe (1855).

Discography: Many of Goethe's songs have been set to music. Famous examples are Das Veilchen (The Violet, Mozart), Erlk�nig (The Erl King, Schubert and Loewe), Ganymed (Ganymede, Schubert and Hugo Wolf), Kl�rchens Lied (The Song of Kl�rchen, Beethoven), Gretchen am Spinnrade (Gretchen at her Spinning-Wheel, Schubert), Heidenr�slein (Wild Rose, Schubert).