Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 04.djvu/412

LEFT GOETHE 348 GOETHE eral staff. After President Roosevelt had decided to undertake the construc- tion of the Panama Canal (^. v.), as a government operation entirely, he appointed Colonel Goethals chairman and chief engineer of a new commission made up of army and navy technical ex- perts, w^hich superseded the former civilian commission. Colonel Goethals brought to the work a wide familiarity with the conduct of government engi- neering operations, a practical knowledge of large scale supervisory and adminis- trative engineering, plus a thorough tech- nical and theoretical equipment. Under his leadership the business of building the canal quickly assumed a systematic, efficient aspect which permeated every division of the great work. The giant problems of machinery, excavation, labor control, sanitation, developed a harmony of organized effort under his control. In- trusted with wide executive powers, Col- onel Goethals succeeded in eliminating points of friction which had so largely delayed progress on the work pre- vious to his appointment. In his selec- tion of assistants he exhibited that rare administrative insight which justified his appointment. The social and sanitary problems were satisfactorily solved under the direction of Gen. William C. Gorgas, and the total result was a degree of in- dustrial efficiency which astonished the engineering world, and which made the completion of the canal a practical actu- ality by 1914. Highly honored for his services to the world, Colonel Goethals received recogni- tion from the University of Pennsylvania which, in 1913, conferred the degree of LL.D. upon him. In 1914 the Civic Forum of New York, the National Insti- tute of Social Sciences, and the National Geographic Society awarded him medals. After declining the office of Police Commissioner of New York City, offered to him by Mayor Mitchel, and refusing the position of City Manager of Dayton, 0., he accepted the office of Civil Gover- nor of the Canal Zone in 1914. He re- signed as Governor of Canal Zone in 1916. During the World War he was a member of the Shipping Board and ad- viser to the Secretary of War and the Council of National Defense. Upon the conclusion of peace he retired to private life as a consulting engineer. GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON (ge'te) a famous German poet, dramatist, and prose writer, the regener- ator of German literature; born in Frankfort-on-the-Main, Germany, Aug. 28, 1749. His father was a counsellor of state, and young Goethe was reared amid all the elemeiits conducive to a taste for, and cultivation of, literature and the arts, In 1764 he proceeded to the University of Leipsic, and four years afterward to that of Strassburg, in order to qualify himself for the legal profession. In 1771, after taking his doctor's degree, he went to re- side at Wetzlai*. Here, in 1773, he pro- duced his romantic drama of "Goetz of Berlichingen," which excited great en- thusiasm in the German literary world. About this time he conceived a passion for a lady who was already betrothed, and who shortly after became the wife of another; which incident, together with the suicide of a student of his acquain- tance — also a sufferer from misplaced affection — he fused together to form the plot of a novel, which, in 1774, he brought out under the title of "The Sufferings of Young Werther." This book, in its sub- limity of maudlin sentimentalism, became JOHANN W. GOETHE at once the rage. In 1775 Goethe was in- vited by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar to take up his residence a his court. At Weimar he became the central figfure of a circle of eminent men that included Wieland, Schiller, and Herder. Goethe was also appointed a privy councillor of legation and superintendent of the the- ater, where he brought out with thorough effect the splendid chefs-d'oeuvre of Schil- ler, in addition to his own dramatic works — "Goetz of Berlichingen," "Iphi- genia in Tauris," "Faust," "Tasso," "Clavigo," "Stella," and "Egmont." In 1786 he visited Italy, where he remained for two years, and in 1792, accompanied the army of the King of Prussia and the Duke of Brunswick in its French cam- paign, of which he became the historiog-