Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/752

Rh (.‘-oethe in We-imar. 728 G O E Louise, the youngest of eight children, seemed to have inherited something of her mother's qualities, veiled by a serious and retiring temper. She married on October 3, 1775, the young duke of Veimar, who was just of age. She reigned over that illustrious court respected and admired, but repelled rather than attracted by its brilliancy and eccentricity. The place which she would naturally have occupied was taken by the duchess Amalia, mother of the grand—duk e. She was of the house of Brunswick, and after two years of marriage had been left a widow at nineteen with two sons. She committed their education to Count Gorz, a prominent character in the history of the time. She afterwards summoned 'iel-and to instruct the elder, and Knebel to instruct the younger. The Deutsz.-he Jlerlmr, founded in 1773 to diminish the influence of the school of Klopstock, gave Veimar importance in the literary world. The duchess was a great lover of the stage, and the best play writers of Germany worked for Weimar. The palace aml the theatre were burnt down in 1774, and the duchess had to content herself with amateurs. After her son's marriage she lived in the simple country houses which surround the capital, the lofty Ettersburg, the low-lying Tiefurt, the far-seeing height of Belvedere. Each of these was awakened to new life by the genius of Goethe. The duke, eighteen years of age, was simple in his tastes, a hater of etiquette and constraint, true, honest, and steadfast, fond of novelty and excitement, of great courage and activity; his impulses, rarely checked, led him rather to chivalrous enterprise than to undesirable excess. His brother, Prince Constantine, had perhaps more talent but less character than the grand—duke. He took but little part in the Weimar life, and died in 1793. Upon this society Goethe, in the strength and beauty of youth, rose like a star. From the moment of his arrival he became the inseparable aml indispensable com- panion of the grand-duke.’ He subdued the affections of all he met with. Wieland said that his soul was as full of him as a dewdrop of the morning sun. He was, take him all in all, the greatest, best, most noble human being that God had ever created. The ﬁrst months at Weimar were spent in a wild round of pleasure. Goethe was treated as a guest. In the autumn, journeys, rides, shooting parties, in the winter, balls, masquerades, skating parties by torch- light, dancing at peasants’ feasts, filled up their time. Evil reports ﬂew about Germany ; the court of Weimar had a bad name ; Klopstock wrote letters of solemn advice, and forbade his young friend Stolberg to accept an appointment which the duke had offered to him. We do not know, and we need not examine, how nmch of these reports was true. -Goethe wrote to Klopstock that if Stolberg came he would find them no worse, and perhaps even better, than he had known them before. We may believe that no decencies were disregarded except the artiﬁcial restrictions of courtly etiquette. Goethe and the duke dined together and bathed together; the duke addressed his friend by the familiar I/um. Goethe slept in his chamber, and tended him when he was ill. In the spring he had to decide whether he would go or stay. In April the duke gave him the little garden by the side of the Ilm, with its lofty roof, in which he lived for the next eight years. In June he invested him with the title, so important to Germans, of geheim-legationsrath, with a seat and voice in the privy council, and an income of £180 a year. By accepting this he was bound to Weimar for ever. We may here mention the different grades of service through which Goethe passed. In January 1779 he undertook the commission of war ; on September 5, 1779, he became geheim-rath ; in September 1781 he received an addition to his salary of £30. This was afterwards raised by .2960 more, and in 1816 he received £450, with an additional allowance for the expense of a carriage. In April 1782 he THE was ennobled by the emperor, and took for his arms a silver star in an azure field ; inJune of the same year he became president of the chamber ml -1'-nterim. lVe know that Goethe devoted himself with industry and enthusiasm to the public business; he made himself acquainted with e'ery pa.rt of his master's territory ; he did his best_to develop its resources; he opened mines and disseminated education ; he threw himself with vigour into the reconstruction of the tiny army. A complete account of his labours in this field cannot be known until the secrets of the Goethe house at Weimar, now hermetically closed, are opened to the curious. We shall then probably ﬁnd that Goethe cannot be fairly charged with want of patriotism, or coldness to the national interest, and that his apparent indifference to the rising of 1813 must be considered in connexion with Ills. resistance to the encroachments of Austria at an earlier time. Goethe’s life was at no time complete without the influence of a noble-hearted woman. This he found in Charlotte von Stein, a lady of the court, wife of the master of the horse. She was thirty-three years of age, mother of seven children. His letters to her extend over a period of ﬁfty years. Until his journey to Italy he made htr acquainted with every action, every thought of his mind, all the working of his brain. He calls her by every endear- ing epithet—the sweet entertainment of his inmost heart, the dear unconquerable source of his happiness, the sweet dream of his life, the anodyne of his sorrows, his liappiness. his gold, his magnet, whom he loves in presence and absence, sleeping and waking, from whom he can never bear to be parted. Many of Goethe's writings were from this time inspired by the necessities of the court. One group of them is formed by the succession of masks or ballets which were performed to celebrate the birthday of the grand- duchess Louise. T /ce Four b'easons, T/ze I’rocessz'on of Lajilamlers, the Nine Female Virtues, The 1)(mr'e Q7’ I/re I’/anels, are sufficiently explained by their names. Others were called for by the amateur theatre, which now was forced to supply the place of the regular drama. The stage was often set in the open air, the seats cut out of turf; the side scenes, of trimmed box, still exist at Belvedere and litters- burg. The actors were the duchess-mother and her sons, the civil servants and the officers, the ladies in waiting and the pages. Goethe was very good in comic parts; in solemn tragedy, as in his own Orestes, he could best interpret the dignity of the ancient stage. Musacus, head-master of the public school, was set to play low comedy; Knebel repre- sented the digniﬁed hero. The chief professional support of the stage was Corona Schroter, whom the duke and Goethe personally carried off from Leipsic. On this visit he saw, after a long absence, Catherine Sclionkopf, Oeser, and other friends of his youth. Goethe represented most of his earlier pieces on the Veimar stage. He wrote nothing of great importance for it till the first sketch of his Iplzigenie. But several smaller pieces owe their origin to this cause. Proserpina and 1):?) Gesclnvisler are melodramas; Jery mul Biitely and 1):?) Fisc/teI'[n are little operas composed to suit the Weimar taste. Sckerz, List, and Iiaclze is an imitation of the Italian style... Besides numerous visits to the court of the Thuriugian princes, sojournings at Dornberg and at Ilmcnau, that retired nook of the Weimar fatherland which still attracts many a pilgrim lover of Goethe, the ﬁrst ten years at Weimar were interrupted by longer journeys. One of these was the winter I larz journeyin December 1 777, undertaken suddenly to make the acquaintance of Plessing, a self-torturing hypo- chondriac, who had written to the poet for advice. With Goethe’s help Plessing recovered from his melancholy, visited him at Wcimar, and entertained him as professor at I’: u v- .~'t--in. J on1‘n