Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Personal Information
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born in Frankfurt, Germany to a wealthy family.
Because of his family's station in life, Goethe had the privileges of affluence and
education that allowed him to study all the common subjects of the day and to
specialize in languages and literature. Goethe attended the University of Leipzig
where he studied law, though he left to go to Strasbourg where he finished his
studies. While in Strasbourg, his literary and philosophical talent was allowed to
flourish. His first play, Gtz von Berlichingen, was an immediate success across
Germany.
Son of Dr. Johann Caspar Goethe y Katharina Elisabeth Goethe
Husband of Christiane von Goethe
Father of Julius August Walter von Goethe; ? Gethe; Caroline Gethe; Carl Gethe;
Catharina Gethe y otros 3
Brother of Cornelia Friederike Christiane Schlosser; Hermann Jacob Goethe;
Catharina Elisabeth Goethe; Johanna Maria Goethe y Georg Adolf Goethe
Influence over people and sciences
Morphology, Compensation, and Polarity
In Goethes day, the reigning systematic botanical theory in Europe was that of
Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778). Plants were classified according to their relation to

each other into species, genera, and kingdom. As an empirical method, Linnaeuss
taxonomy ordered external characteristics size, number, and location of
individual organs as generic traits.
Goethes morphology, in opposition to the static taxonomy of Linnaeus, studied
these perceptible limitations not merely in order to classify plants in a tidy
fashion, but as instances of natural generation for the sake of intuiting the inner
working of nature itself, whole and entire. Since all organisms undergo a common
succession of internal forms, we can intuitively uncover within these changes an
imminent ideal of development, which Goethe names the originary phenomenon
or Urphnomen. The morphological method is thus a combination of careful
empirical observation and a deeper intuition into the idea that guides the pattern
of changes over time as an organism interacts with its environment. Natural
observation is the necessary first step of science; but because the senses can only
attend to outer forms, a full account of the object also requires an intuition that
apprehends an object with the eyes of the mind. Morphology reveals, the laws
of transformation according to which nature produces one part through another
and achieves the most diversified forms through the modification of a single
organ. Goethes theories of morphology, polarity, and compensation each have
their roots in his dramatic and poetic writings.
Theory of colors
As his morphology targeted the system of Linnaeus, Goethes Farbenlehre
challenged what was then and among the general public still remains the leading
view of optics, that of Isaac Newton (1642-1727). However, most of Goethes
vitriol was not directed at Newton himself, but the dismissive attitudes of his
adherents, who would not so much as entertain the possibility that their
conceptual framework was inadequate. He compares Newtons optics, to an old
castle, which was at first constructed by its architect with youthful precipitation
[] The same system was pursued by his successors and heirs: their increased
wants within, and harassing vigilance of their opponents without, and various
accidents compelled them in some place to build nearby, in others in connection
with the fabric, and thus to extend the original plan, (Goethe 1970, xlii). Thus,
while Goethe esteems Newton as a redoubtable genius, his issue is with those

half-witted apologists who effectively corrupted that very same edifice they
fought to defend. His aim is accordingly to, dismantle it from gable and roof
downwards; so that the sun may at last shine into the old nest of rats and owls
Philosophical Influence
Goethes general influence on European culture is gargantuan. In 19th century
Germany alone, authors like Heine, Novalis, Jean Paul, Tieck, Hoffman, and
Eichendorff all owe tremendous debts to Gtz and Werther. Thomas Carlyle, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, Kurt Tucholsky, Thomas Mann, James Joyce and too
many others to name have since paid tribute to the master from Weimar.
Composers like Mozart, Liszt, and Mahler dedicated works to Goethes drama,
while Beethoven himself mused that the greatest musical accomplishment
possible would be a perfect musical expression Faust. Goethes ideas have truly
launched a thousand ships upon their cultural and intellectual expeditions.
Philosophically, the lineage is comparatively more defined.In his mature years,
Goethe was to witness the philosophical focus in Germany shift from Kant to the
Idealists.
Literature influence and list of books.
The most important of Goethe's works produced before he went to Weimar were
Gtz von Berlichingen (1773), a tragedy that was the first work to bring him
recognition, and the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (called Die Leiden des
jungen Werthers in German) (1774), which gained him enormous fame as a writer
in the Sturm und Drang period which marked the early phase of Romanticism
indeed the book is often considered to be the "spark" which ignited the
movement, and can arguably be called the world's first "best-seller". (For the
entirety of his life this was the work with which the vast majority of Goethe's
contemporaries associated him). During the years at Weimar before he met
Schiller he began Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, wrote the dramas Iphigenie
auf Tauris (Iphigenia in Tauris), Egmont, Torquato Tasso, and the fable Reineke
Fuchs. To the period of his friendship with Schiller belong the conception of
Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years (the continuation of Wilhelm Meister's
Apprenticeship), the idyll of Hermann and Dorothea, the Roman Elegies and the

verse drama The Natural Daughter. In the last period, between Schiller's death, in
1805, and his own, appeared Faust Part One, Elective Affinities, the West-Eastern
Divan (a collection of poems in the Persian style, influenced by the work of Hafez),
his autobiographical Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit (From My Life:
Poetry and Truth) which covers his early life and ends with his departure for
Weimar, his Italian Journey, and a series of treatises on art. His writings were
immediately influential in literary and artistic circles.
Books
The following is a list of the major publications of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(17491832).
1771: "Heidenrslein" ("Heath Rosebud"), poem
1773: "Prometheus", poem
1773: Gtz von Berlichingen, drama
1787: Iphigenie auf Tauris (Iphigenia in Tauris), drama
1786: Novella, novella
1788: Egmont, drama
1790: Torquato Tasso, drama
1790: Rmische Elegien (Roman Elegies), poetry collection
1793: Die Belagerung von Mainz, (The Siege of Mainz), non-fiction
1794: Reineke Fuchs, fable
1795: Das Mrchen (The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily), fairy-tale
179495: Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten, novella, which also includes
the fairy tale Das Mrchen
179596 (in collaboration with Friedrich Schiller): Die Xenien (The Xenia),
collection of epigrams

1796: Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship), novel
1805: "Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert" ("Winckelmann and His Century")
1808: Faust Part One, closet drama
1813: "Gefunden" ("Found"), a poem
1817: Italienische Reise (Italian Journey), journals
1832: Faust Part Two, closet drama
1836: Gesprche mit Goethe (Conversations with Goethe) also translated as:
Conversations with Eckermann

The Faust
Content
Preface
An Goethe
Dedication
Prelude at the Theatre
Prologue in Heaven
First Part of the Tragedy
Night
Before the CityGate
The Study
The Study
Auerbachs Cellar in Leipzig

Witches Kitchen
Street
Evening a Small, Neatly Kept Chamber
Promenade
The Neighbors House
A Street
Garden
A GardenArbor
Forest and Cavern
Margarets Room
Marthas Garden
At the Fountain
Donjon
Night
Cathedral
WalpurgisNight
WalpurgisNights Dream
Dreary Day
Night
Dungeon
Plot

Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend. He is a scholar who is highly
successful yet dissatisfied with his life, so he makes a pact with the Devil,
exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. The Faust
legend has been the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical works
that have reinterpreted it through the ages. Faust and the adjective Faustian imply
a situation in which an ambitious person surrenders moral integrity in order to
achieve power and success for a delimited term.The Faust of early booksas well
as the ballads, dramas, movies, and puppet-plays which grew out of themis
irrevocably damned because he prefers human to divine knowledge; "he laid the
Holy Scriptures behind the door and under the bench, refused to be called doctor
of Theology, but preferred to be styled doctor of Medicine".[1] Plays and comic
puppet theatre loosely based on this legend were popular throughout Germany in
the 16th century, often reducing Faust and Mephistopheles to figures of vulgar
fun. The story was popularised in England by Christopher Marlowe, who gave it a
classic treatment in his play, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. In Goethe's
reworking of the story two hundred years later, Faust becomes a dissatisfied
intellectual who yearns for "more than earthly meat and drink" in his life.
Characters Principal
Faust
Martha
Valentine
Mephistopheles
Wagner