see page history
Overview edit
Bibliography
-
(2011)
The Complete Harvard Classics Library Shelf of Fiction
-
(2005)
Faust: Part 1 (Penguin Classics)
-
(1987)
Aus meinem Leben. (English.)
-
(1819)
Poems of the West and East: West-Eastern Divan - West-Oestlicher Divan: Bi-Lingual Edition of the Complete Poems: With an Introduction by Katharina Mommsen
-
(1808)
Faust
Personal edit
- Legal name: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Birthdate: August 28, 1749
- Birthplace: Frankfurt, Germany
- Nationality: German
- Gender: Male
- Official Website: (add)
- Genres: Poet, Novelist, Playwright, Natural Philosopher, Diplomat
- Date of death: March 22, 1832 (aged 82)
- Burial location: Weimar (Weimarer Fürstengruft), Thüringen, Germany
Unbound edit
This content section has been deprecated.
Please help us clean up the page by moving the content from this section into other relevant sections. Once it has been emptied this section will no longer appear on the page but the edit history will still be available in the page's history.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer and polymath. Goethe is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. Goethe's works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long poem of modern European literature. Goethe's other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.
Goethe was one of the key figures of German literature and the movement of Weimar Classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; this movement coincides with Enlightenment, Sentimentality (Empfindsamkeit), Sturm und Drang and Romanticism. The author of the scientific text Theory of Colours, his influential ideas on plant and animalmorphology and homology were extended and developed by 19th century naturalists including Charles Darwin.He also served at length as the Privy Councilor of the duchy of Saxe-Weimar.
In politics Goethe was conservative. At the time of the French Revolution, he thought the enthusiasm of the students and professors to be a perversion of their energy and remained skeptical of the ability of the masses to govern. Likewise, he "did not oppose the War of Liberation waged by the German states against Napoleon, but remained aloof from the patriotic efforts to unite the various parts of Germany into one nation; he advocated instead the maintenance of small principalities ruled by benevolent despots."
Goethe's influence spread across Europe, and for the next century his works were a major source of inspiration inmusic, drama, poetry and philosophy. Early in his career, however, he wondered whether painting might be his true vocation; late in his life, he expressed the expectation that he would ultimately be remembered above all for his work on colour.
