Page:NIE 1905 - p. 810.jpg

GOETHE. freeing Faust at last from the Mephistophelean spirit of negation. So the teaching is the same as that of Wilhelm Meister. The scholar, as the poet, passes, in Goethe's conception, from a groping, contemplative, searching æsthetic existence under the spur of negative spirits and ideal models, to active, useful labor. Here is to be found Goethe's philosophy of life, which aims to realize the ideal by the idealization of the real, to correlate action with thought. “The rest of my life may be regarded as a free gift,” he said as he sealed the manuscript of this Second Part of Faust. “It is now really indifferent what I do, or if I do anything at all.” It was his philosophic testament to Germany.

It is to this last period, too, that we owe the Conversations (Gespräche) with Eckermann, which have preserved to us much keen criticism of men and things, for during these declining years he continued to be in closest touch with the intellectual movement of his own country and of others. Weimar became a goal of pilgrimage to men of many minds and nations. He seemed to Germans the survivor, almost the last, of a heroic age. Some of these visitors give us glimpses of the old man's life, among them Heine, Thackeray, and his old friend Lottie Kestner. After his wife's death he traveled but little, seldom farther than Jena, lingering especially over places associated with his prime, and toward the last working intermittently, as health permitted, on the annals of his Weimar life. In 1828 Karl August died, followed two years later by Goethe's son August, whose widow, Ottilie, cared for her father-in-law to the end. In the same year (1830) Grand Duchess Luise passed away. So Goethe was left, almost the last of his generation. He died in Weimar March 22, 1832, in his chair, so peacefully that men did not know the hour. Eckermann, who saw his body as it was prepared for burial, noted the deep peace and firmness of the features, the magnificence of the limbs, the broad, strong, and arched chest. Nowhere on the body, he says, was there a trace of wasting. “A perfect man lay in great beauty before me.” This body lies now, with that of Schiller, in the ducal mausoleum of Weimar in front of the bronze coffins of the two princely patrons of both, Luise and Karl August.

This is the most completely rounded literary life in history—a life of monumental proportion and yet of perfect symmetry, responsive to all intellectual impulses of art, philosophy, and science, open to every light, yet self-poised and self-controlled till its calm seems Olympian. Goethe is at once the representative and the prophet of the modern spirit, reconciling the antinomies of the ideal and the real in the world-wisdom of his Faust.

The literature that has gathered around Goethe would fill a library—indeed, it does so in the Goethe archives at Weimar, whence issue the Goethe Annual and the great edition of his works, embracing, also, the Tagebücher and Briefe, which is now drawing to completeness. Besides this edition may be named Heinemann's annotated edition of the Werke which began to appear in 1901 (Leipzig). Of the Briefe, there are annotated selections by E. von der Hellen (Stuttgart, 1901 et seq.) and Stein (Berlin, 1902 et seq.), who has edited also the correspondence with Schiller (Leipzig, no date). The correspondence with Frau von Stein is best edited by Scholl (3d ed., Frankfort, 1889-1900). Eckermann's Gespräche are edited with an introduction and notes by Moldenhauer, and, better, by Bartels (Leipzig, 1902). Von Biederman has also edited Goethe's Gespräche ( 10 vols., Leipzig, 1889-1896).

Of the lives of Goethe, Düntzer's (Leipzig, 1883), is the most complete; Schäfer's, though old (Bremen, 1851, often reëdited), not antiquated; Goedeke's Goethe's Leben und Schriften (Stuttgart, 1877) is shorter. Popular biographies are those by Heinemann (Leipzig, 1899), Prem (ib., 1900), Witkowski (ib., 1900), and Bielschowsky (Munich, 1902 et seq.).

Among recent studies of Goethe the more significant are: Biedermann, Goethe Forschungen (1st series, Frankfort, 1879; 2d and 3d series, Leipzig, 1886, 1899); Richard M. Meyer, “Goethe,” in Bettelheim, Geisteshelden (Berlin, 1898); Hermann Grimm, Goethe Vorlesungen (6th ed., Berlin, 1899); Düntzer, Zur Goetheforschung (1891); Zarncke, Goetheschriften (Leipzig, 1897); Bernays, Der junge Goethe (Leipzig, 1875); Weissenfels, Der junge Goethe (Tübingen, 1899); Menzel, Der Frankfurter Goethe (Frankfurt, 1900); Diezmann, Goethe und die lustige Zeit in Weimar (2d ed., Weimar, 1901); Burkhardt, Goethe's Unterhaltungen mit dem Kanzler Müller (1879); Fischer, Goethe und Napoleon (Frauenfeld, 1901); Funk, Goethe und Lavater (Weimar, 1901); Virchow, Goethe als Naturforscher (1861); Sell, Goethe's Stellung zu Religion und Christenthum (Freiburg, 1899); Vogel, Goethe's Selbstzeugnisse über seine Stellung zur Religion (Leipzig, 1899); Scherer, Aufsätze über Goethe (Berlin, 1900); Bode, Goethes Aesthetik (Berlin, 1901). To celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Goethe's birth there was issued Goethe, eine Biographie in Bildnissen (Leipzig, 1899), a folio with 166 portraits. See, also, for Goethe's descendants, Von Gerstenbergk, Ottilie von Goethe und ihre Söhne (Stuttgart, 1891). Lewes's Life (London, 1855) is the best in English. Wilhelm Meister has been admirably translated by Carlyle, Faust by Bayard Taylor and many others. Some of the lyrics have been rendered masterfully by Longfellow and others, but there is no worthy rendering of the poems or dramas as a whole.  GOETHE,, known as “Frau Rat” (1731-1808). The mother of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. She was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and was a daughter of Johann Wolfgang Textor, a prominent citizen of that city. At the age of seventeen she was married to Johann Kaspar Goethe, by whom she had four children. She was a woman of exceptional intellect and marked individuality, as evidenced by her letters, and in the frequent references to her found in the works of her son, upon whose intellectual development she undoubtedly exerted a remarkable influence. She was made the heroine of the work by Bettina von Amim entitled Dies Buch gehört dem König (1843), and is one of the central figures of Gutzkow's famous play, Der Königsleutnant. Much of the correspondence of Katharina Elisabeth Goethe has been published in the work entitled Goethe's Mother, Correspondence of Catharine Elizabeth Goethe with Goethe (1889). 