Goethe was born in Frankfurt am Main into a well-to-do
middle-class family. His father, Johann, withdrew from public
life and educated his children himself. Goethe's six-volume
autobiography, Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit
(1811-22; trans. as Memoirs of Goethe, 1824), recalls his
upbringing as a chaotic experience, but it may have been the
most stimulating possible nourishment for his synthesizing
mind.
At 16, Goethe began his studies at the university in Leipzig,
then a leading cultural center. Here he wrote his earliest
poems and plays. In 1770 at the university in Strasbourg he
came under the influence of Johann Gottfried von Herder, who
introduced him to the works of Shakespeare. In 1771, Goethe
received a licentiate in law at Strasbourg and during the next
4 years practiced law with his father and wrote two works that
brought him literary celebrity.
In 1775 he was invited to the ducal court of Karl
Augustus in Saxe-Weimar, where he held (1775-86) numerous high
offices and spent most of the remainder of his life. During
his early years there he also wrote beautiful and mysterious
lyrics to Charlotte von Stein, a married woman 7 years his
senior.
During a 2-year sojourn in Italy (1786-88), Goethe recognized
that he was an artist and resolved to devote the rest of his
life to writing. The decision did not promise to be a happy
one at first; his return to Weimar was followed by years of
alienation from court society. Many of his friends were
offended by his living with young Christiane Vulpius, who bore
him a son in 1789. To legitimize the child, Goethe married
Christiane in 1806.
Goethe spent much of his time in nearby Jena and from 1794 to
1805 developed an intense collaboration with Friedrich
Schiller, a union that many regard as a high point in German
letters. However problematic Goethe's decision to withdraw
from public life may have been, it did lead to his most
important literary and scientific achievements. Goethe's
creative powers persisted through his sixties and seventies,
and he died in Weimar at the age of 82.
H. G. Haile
