Von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749–1832)

Markus Helmut Friedrich Peuckert

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born on August 28, 1749 in Frankfurt a.M. Main and died March 22, 1832 in Weimar. He was a poet, playwright, and novelist but also a natural philosopher, scientist, and minister ( Geheimer Rat ) of the duchy of Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach. His parents—Katharine Elisabeth neé Textor and Johann Kaspar Goethe, a lawyer who held a property big enough to make a living—belonged to the Frankfurt bourgeoisie (Bürgertum). Goethe studied law in Leipzig (1765–1768) and Strassbourg (1770–1771), later working for a short time as a lawyer in Frankfurt a.M. and Wetzlar. His first drama “Götz von Berlichingen” was published in 1773 and his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther ( Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers) in 1774. The epistolary novel describes how a young man called Werther loses his heart to Lotte, who has already decided to marry another man, and ends tragically with the protagonist's In ...

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