Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 13.djvu/37



was born on the 28th August, 1749, as the clock sounded the hour of noon, in the busy town of Frankfort-on-the-Main. The busy town, as may be supposed, was quite heedless of what was then passing in the corner of that low, heavy-beamed room in the Grosse Hirsch-Graben, where an infant, black, and almost lifeless, was watched with agonising anxiety—an anxiety dissolving into tears of joy, as the aged grandmother exclaimed to the pale mother: "Räthin, er lebt!—he lives!" But if the town was heedless, not so were the stars, if astrologers are to be trusted; the stars knew who was gasping for life beside his trembling mother, and in solemn convocation they prefigured his future greatness, Goethe, with a grave smile, notes this conjunction of the stars.

Whatever the stars may have betokened, this August, 1749, was a momentous month to Germany, if only because it gave birth to the man whose influence on his nation has been greater than that of any man since Luther, not even excepting Lessing. A momentous month in very momentous times. It was the middle of the eighteenth century: a period when the movement which had culminated in Luther was passing from religion to politics, and freedom of thought was translating itself into liberty of action. From theology the movement had communicated itself to philosophy, morals, and politics. The agitation was still mainly in the higher classes, but it was gradually descending to