Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1749–1832 3 entries
Biography
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist and statesman, the central figure of German literature. He was born in Frankfurt am Main and studied law in Leipzig and Strasbourg. His novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, published in 1774, made him famous across Europe almost overnight. In 1775 he moved to the court of Weimar, where he served the duke as a minister for many years.
His friendship with Friedrich Schiller lies at the heart of Weimar Classicism. He wrote poems, plays and novels, among them Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, and he studied plants, minerals and the theory of colours. His life’s work was the drama Faust, the story of a scholar who makes a pact with the devil, on which he worked for some sixty years and which he completed shortly before his death in Weimar in 1832.
- Aphorisms 3