Goethe, who has a disciplined father and a mother with a high imagination, made these two features from his family felt in his works. He is a child who does not forget his grief, pain, and horror.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born on 28 August 1749 in Frankfurt. His mother, Katharina Elisabeth Textor, is the mayor's daughter. His father, Johann Caspar Goethe, was a doctor of law who was an advisor to the Crown. The father, who created a large library and a picture gallery, wrote his memories of his trip to Italy in Italian, and protected local artists, later retired from public life and devoted himself to the education of his two surviving children, Johann and Cornelia.
In addition to languages such as English, Greek, Latin, and French, Goethe also receives training in horse riding, dance, and piano. Goethe, who has a disciplined father and a mother with a high imagination, made these two features from his family felt in his works. He is a child who does not forget his grief, pain, and horror. The Lisbon earthquake he experienced in 1755 greatly affected his spiritual world. When he was nine years old, he wrote articles describing his grief for his lost brother Jacob.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour. He is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in the German language, his work has a profound and wide-ranging influence on Western literary, political, and philosophical thought from the late 18th century to the present day.
With the seven years war between Austria and France that broke out in 1756, Frankfurt was occupied. With Goethe's house being the headquarters of the occupation forces, little Goethe watches the painters working for the commander and often goes to the Junghof French Theatre. This caused him to be interested in French art.
Goethe, who has a large library, was introduced to literature at an early age with his interest in reading and the stories his mother told. In 1765, with his father's choice, he went to Leipzig to study law. However, he experiences a cultural shock. It is as if he came from an old world with his language, clothing, and lifestyle. He deals with artistic subjects instead of this part, where he can't get too hot. Goethe laid the foundation of Faust, a literary classic, inspired by the events he lived here.
Anna Katharina (Käthchen) falls in love with Schönkopf. Goethe is also passionate about knowledge and writing. He is not ready for a life of two, they break up. His life in Leipzig ends as a result of a serious illness (internal bleeding and lung disease), and he returns to his family. After a long period of illness and rest, Goethe's first book of poetry, Arnette, was published in 1767.
Goethe goes to Strasbourg and continues his legal education there. Here he falls in love with Friederike, the daughter of a priest, and writes his first mature poems. However, he is far from the idea of marriage, they break up. Friederike would never marry again.
Although he opened a law firm as soon as he returned to Frankfurt, literature has always been his top priority. In 1773, he published his work, The Knight with Iron Hands (Götz von Berlichingen), which was a drama and attracted a lot of attention. Written in memory of a 16th-century hero, this play also includes many references to the Turks. Götz, who is a historical character in the work, participates in the campaign against the Turks in 1542. However, when Goethe portrays the image of the Turks as an enemy, he never disdains and describes the wars with them as highly problematic. This work is staged by the Koch establishment in Berlin on April 14, 1774.
We can easily say that the Turks appeared on Goethe's horizon from the very early days of the author. In the book of Latin exercises that Goethe used when he was 8 years old, we see that sentences about 16th-century Ottoman history were written. In March 1758, a note was made about Sultan Selim I: “Selimus became the emperor of the Turkish kingdom after killing his father Bayezid and exiling his brother Zizimus.”
From 1772, his articles were published in the art journal Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeige. During this period, he was the main representative of the Sturm und Drang (emotionalism) movement, which emerged as a reaction to the Enlightenment and was an important promoter of romanticism. Goethe examines the life of the Prophet Muhammad and approaches Islam with interest. Later, he will read what the famous historian Josef von Hammer wrote about the Qur'an. He attempts to learn Arabic and notes many verses from the 10 suras in the Qur'an. In 1773, he wrote the eulogy, The Song of Muhammad (Mahomets Gesang).
Goethe falls in love with a woman who will open a new page in the history of literature. It was an unrequited love that would make him very unhappy and eventually dictate The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774. In 1772, in Westler, where young lawyers traditionally go to the master, he meets a girl named Charlotte Buff and falls in love with her. Although he tries to get close, Charlotte does not reciprocate, she is engaged. Her fiancé is Kestner, whom Goethe befriends here. Goethe finds the solution to leave the city. He corresponds with both Charlotte and Kestner. The couple doesn't announce their wedding date so that he doesn't get hurt. In a letter from Kestner, he learns that a mutual acquaintance committed suicide. The reason for suicide is hopeless love for another man's wife. This news is almost the spark for Young Werther to write his Sorrows.
The Sorrows of Young Werther is considered to be the beginning of the modern German novel, as it substitutes emotion and imagination for reason, that is, for the first time the individual is so exalted and God finds his reflection in the heart of man and in every particle of nature. In Conversations with Goethe by Johann Peter Eckermann, who assisted him, Goethe clearly states that the novel has autobiographical features in his own words: “These were mostly the product of personal relationships that made me uneasy, upset and put Werther in the mood to write. I have lived, loved, and suffered so much! This is the situation."
It takes place in a small town called Walheim, where a young man named Werther goes to forget the pain of his deceased lover. Werther's world changes when he falls in love with an engaged girl named Lotte; On the one hand, his feet do not touch the ground, on the other hand, he is writhing with the pain of his hopeless love and jealousy. Searching day and night for a solution to put an end to his desperation, the young man finally decides to die. It is said that the novel, which influenced all the youth in Germany at that time, caused many suicides, that the blue coat, yellow vest, and boots worn by Werther created fashion, and that even Napoleon always carried the book with him.
Between 1772 and 1775, he conducted 28 cases as a lawyer. In 1775 he became engaged to Lili Schönemann, the daughter of a banker from Frankfurt. But they break up due to family and environmental incompatibility. Goethe goes to Weimar at the invitation of Duke Karl August. Here, besides his political duties, he undertakes the palace theater and educational affairs, and the control of the mines and urban forests. This gives him the opportunity to be closer to nature. In fact, his interest in nature starts from a very young age and continues throughout his life. In this period, Goethe, who turned to natural science research, works on subjects that he has been interested in for a long time, such as plants, stones, the geological structure of the earth, human and animal anatomy, and the secrets of colors and light. He discovers the jawbone (os intermaxillary). However, Goethe stayed away from literature during the first ten years he spent in Weimar, publishing nothing but some of his poems in magazines.
Goethe begins dating Charlotte von Stein, the court lady who is seven years older than him and has lost four of her seven children. However, there are different opinions about the relationship between them, it is said that they are together on the level of friendship, not love. Frau Stein teaches him courtly etiquette and helps him achieve inner peace and discipline. Goethe replaces the image of man, who considers himself superior to the gods, to be conscious of his limits and in harmony with his environment. He wrote the poem "Why Did You Evil Eyes on Us" for Frau Von Stein.
In this period, Frau Von Stein becomes one of the heroes of the ideal of humanity theme in German literature in the plays he wrote. Now Goethe's attitude towards society changes completely. He begins to choose his heroes not from those who rebel against the law, but from those who live in harmony with the order.
In 1786, Goethe had troubled days due to the problems in his relationship with Frau Von Stein and his palace duties, and only by informing his maid, he went on a journey to Italy in the guise of a merchant named Möller. Goethe, who described this trip he made between 1786-1788 as a rebirth, switched to classicism in his understanding of art on his return, and this transition is accepted as a transition to classicism in German literature. His relationship with Frau Von Stein ends with a secret trip to Rome. On this trip, besides Greek and Roman Art, the results he reached by examining different vegetation in Italy added a new dimension to his view of the world.
After Goethe's return, he married 23-year-old Christiane Vulpius, an uneducated woman, in 1789. Goethe, on the other hand, likes the spontaneity and cheerful character of Vulpius. Christiane was devoted to Goethe and called her mein bettschatz, which could be translated as the treasure of my mattress. A son, Julius August Walther, is born, out of five children, only August survives. Roman Laments is one of Christiane's poems in which he expresses the joy of life she gave him.
The two greatest poets that Germany has produced are undoubtedly Goethe and Schiller. Goethe sees Schiller, who was just beginning to gain fame at that time, as his opposite in every respect. But when Schiller asked him to contribute to a new journal he was starting in 1794, he happily accepted. In a short time, their friendship begins, which will last until Schiller's death in 1805.
He met with Napoleon in Weimar in 1808. In Goethe's eyes, Napoleon was undoubtedly the commander of the French Revolution and the creator of a new order in his country called civil society. Saying that he had read The Sorrows of Young Werther seven times, Napoleon awards Goethe with the Legion of Honor. He considers his Theory of Colors (Farbenlehre), which he completed in 1810, to be his most important work.
Bettina von Arnim, Goethe's lover and the well-known poet of the 20th century, first met Beethoven in Vienna in 1810 and said in a long letter to Goethe, "After seeing him, I forgot you and the world." He brings Goethe together with Beethoven on 19 July 1812. Beethoven finds Goethe a bit weak, and Goethe finds Beethoven too wild. Beethoven composed Egmont for Goethe's play of the same name.
Goethe travels around the Rhine and Main in 1814. Here he meets Johann Jakob von Willemer and his partner Marianne von Willemer in Frankfurt. Goethe falls in love with Marianne, even though he is 65 years old. His wife, Christiane, died in 1816. This love causes the author to leave deep and different traces on both Western and Eastern Literature. Marianne is a beautiful and attractive woman who also writes lyrical poems. He completes the East-West Divan, which includes this love, and was first published in 1819.
He published the 1st part of Faust in 1806, in which he first became interested in 1770-1771, and wrote the first form known today as the First Faust (Urfaust). The second part, which he wrote in the last years of his life, was published only after his death. Faust, which took such a long time to be written, is accepted as a work that symbolizes Goethe's whole life, as it also reflects the changes he went through during all these years. The theme in Faust's focus is the bet made between Faust and Mephistopheles, who believe that there is a good essence in man. The demonic Mephistopheles defends the image of a man who can easily be led astray. While Faust fights that man is good, the devil, with God's permission to seduce him, uses his opposite influence on man.
In 1823, Goethe fell ill with pericarditis. Old man Goethe proposes to 19-year-old Ulrike von Levetzow, whom he met with his mother in Karlsbad. At the end of his frustration, he broke away from his soul and put it on paper with his work called Marienbad Lament. Then he always prefers silence and calmness in and around his inner world.
Goethe died on March 22, 1832. He is buried in Weimar, and later Schiller's tomb is moved to the same place. Goethe's poems, plays, novels, essays, art criticism, and autobiographical books have won the admiration of generations for centuries. Goethe's works, there are compositions by many artists such as Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Mendelssohn, Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss, Hector Berlioz, and Franz Liszt.