Born Aug. 28, 1749, in Frankfurt am Main; died Mar. 22, 1832, in Weimar. German poet, thinker, and naturalist. Outstanding representative of the Enlightenment in Germany, one of the founders of modern German literature, and a versatile scientist whose work in the natural sciences reflected “ingenious guesses anticipating the most recent theory of development” (F. Engels, in K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 21, p. 287).

The son of an imperial councillor who was a well-educated burgher, Goethe studied at Leipzig from 1765 to 1768 and at Strasbourg from 1770 to 1771. He attended lectures in jurisprudence and many other scholarly disciplines, including medicine. In Strasbourg, Goethe met J. G. von Herder and became part of the Sturm und Drang movement. In 1775 he went to Weimar at the invitation of Duke Karl August. Scorning the opinion of the court, Goethe entered into a common-law marriage with Christiane Vulpius, a young woman who worked at an artificial flower workshop. His attitude toward the Great French Revolution was restrained, but at the battle of Valmy in September 1792 he brilliantly described the importance in world history of the victory won by the French revolutionary forces: “On this day and at this place a new era of world history has begun.” Goethe’s friendship with F. Schiller, which began in 1794, had great importance. Goethe was also the director of a theater that he organized in Weimar in 1791.

Goethe’s early poetical works (1767-69) went back to the traditions of Anacreontic lyrics. His first collection of poems was published in 1769. In 1770 a new phase of his creative life began. The lyric verse of his Sturm und Drang period constitutes one of the most brilliant pages in the history of German poetry. The heroes of Goethe’s lyrics represent the embodiment of nature or organic unity with nature (“The Wanderer,” 1772, and “Song of Mahomet,” 1774). The poet turned to mythological figures, reinterpreting them in a spirit of rebellion (The Song of the Wanderer in the Storm, 1771—72, and the monologue of Prometheus from an unfinished drama, 1773). The historical drama Götz von Berlichingen (1773) reflected events on the eve of the Peasant War and resounded with a stern reminder of the arbitrary rule of princes and the tragedy of the fragmented country. In the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), Goethe used the sentimental novel in epistolary form to convey the dramatic personal experiences of the protagonist and simultaneously to describe contemporary German life. In the drama Egmont (1788), which Goethe began even before he moved to Weimar and which was linked with the ideas of the Sturm und Drang, the action focuses on the conflict between the foreign oppressors and the people, whose resistance has been suppressed but not broken. The drama’s conclusion gives a resounding call to the struggle for freedom.

The decade from 1776 to 1785 was a transitional period in Goethe’s development. His reaction against individualistic rebelliousness turned his thoughts toward an understanding of the necessity for the self-limitation of the individual (The Limits of Humanity, 1778-81, and “Ilmenau,” 1783). True to the heroic traditions of humanism, however, Goethe affirmed that human beings are capable of creative daring—for example, The Godlike, 1782, in which the contradictory nature of his world view was revealed. The poet cannot completely escape the oppressive influence of outmoded social relations, and therefore he “is at times monumental and grand, and at times petty; at times he is the recalcitrant, mocking genius who scorns the world, and at times the cautious, narrow-minded Philistine who is content with all” (F. Engels, in K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 4, p. 233). In the late 1780’s the concept of a so-called Weimar classicism as a special variant of the European and German Enlightenment took shape. In the idea of harmony, which Goethe took from J. Winckelmann and which was developed by Goethe and Schiller, the affirmation of the ideal harmonious personality is combined with a program of gradual reforms. The idea of struggle is replaced by the idea of education, which in the final analysis represented a reconciliation with the existing order (the drama Torquato Tasso, written during 1780-89 and published in 1790).

Goethe’s pagan and materialistic perception of the culture of antiquity is most clearly expressed in the Roman Elegies (1790), which glorified the pleasures of the flesh. Later, in the ballad “The Bride of Corinth” (1797), the poet contrasted .this life-affirming paganism with the asceticism of the Christian religion. The tragedy Iphigenia in Tauride (written between 1779 and 1786 and published in 1787) was based on the ancient Greek myth. Its theme was the victory of humanity over barbarism. The Great French Revolution was directly reflected in the Venetian Epigrams (written in 1790, published in 1796), in the drama The Citizen General (published in 1793), and in the short story The Conversations of German Emigrants (1794-95). Goethe rejected revolutionary violence, but at the same time he recognized the necessity for a social transformation. During these years he wrote the satirical narrative poem Reynard the Fox (1793), an exposé of feudal arbitrariness. In the narrative poem Hermann und Dorothea (1797), which was written in hexameters in a genre similar to the idyll, Goethe contrasted the quiet, patriarchal way of life in a remote German village with the “unprecedented turmoil” of events unfolding on the other side of the Rhine River.

Goethe’s major work of the 1790’s was the novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (written between 1793 and 1796 and published during 1795-96). The protagonist’s enthusiasm for the stage proves to be a youthful error. At the end of the novel he sees that his work lies in practical economic activity. In fact, this signified a reconciliation with the backward reality of Germany at the time. Brilliant, realistic scenes of everyday life and colorful imagery are interwoven in the novel with a deliberately enigmatic conclusion and the portrayal of mysterious figures.

Goethe’s autobiography, From My Life: Poetry and Truth (parts 1-4, published 1811-33), covers the early period of his life before he moved to Weimar and takes a critical view of the rebelliousness of the Sturm und Drang. The Journey to Italy (vols. 1-3, published 1816-29) is a remarkable artistic document of the period. In the novel of family life, Elective Affinities (published in 1809), Goethe raised the question of freedom of expression of feelings, but within the framework of the themes of renunciation and loyalty to the family structure. The novel Wilhelm Meister’s Travels (parts 1-3, 1821-29), which was linked in many ways with the tradition of the German romantic novel, is noteworthy for its idea of collective labor, which is embodied in the naïve utopia of an artisans’ commune. The interest in the Orient that was typical of romanticism was reflected in The Western-Eastern Divan (written during 1814-19, published in 1819), which was inspired by Persian poetry.

In the publicistic writings of his last years, Goethe rejected the passion for all things Teutonic and the mystical sides of German romanticism. However, he welcomed the collection of folk songs by L. J. von Arnim and C. Brentano, The Boy’s Magic Horn (1806-08), and expressed high regard for Byron’s romanticism. Polemicizing against the nationalistic tendencies that developed in Germany during and after the Napoleonic wars, Goethe proposed the idea of “world literature,” thereby divorcing himself from Hegel’s skepticism about the future of art.

The tragedy Faust (part 1, 1808; part 2, 1825-31) summarizes the development of all European 18th-century Enlightenment thought and anticipates the problematics of the 19th century. In developing his theme Goethe relied on the popular book on Faust (1587) and on puppet theater presentations of the legend. The Faust figure embodies belief in the unlimited potential of human beings. Faust’s daring and inquiring mind is contrasted to the fruitless efforts of the dry pedant Wagner, who is estranged from life and the people. Goethe conveys his idea in the concise formula often repeated by Lenin—“All theory is gray, my friend. But forever green is the tree of life.” In the course of his philosophical search, Faust transcends the contemplative spirit of German social thought and postulates action as the foundation of being. The profound insights of dialectics find their reflection in Goethe’s work (the monologue of the Earth Spirit and Faust’s own contradictory aspirations). Goethe does away with the metaphysical juxtaposition of good and evil. Negation and skepticism, which are personified in the figure of Mephistopheles, become driving forces that help Faust in his search for truth. The road to creation passes through destruction: in N. G. Chernyshevskii’s words, this was the conclusion arrived at by Goethe in generalizing on the historical experience of his age. The Gretchen story becomes an important link in the process of Faust’s seekings. The tragedy of the situation arises from the unresolvable contradiction between the ideal of the natural human being, which Faust imagines Margarete to be, and the reality of a young woman of limited outlook from a petit bourgeois background. At the same time, Margarete is the victim of social prejudices and the dogmatism of church morality. Striving to affirm the humanist ideal, Faust turns to antiquity. His marriage to Helen emerges as a symbol of the unity of two epochs. However, this unity is only an illusion—Helen disappears, and their son dies. The result of Faust’s search is the conviction that the ideal must be attained in the real world. Here Goethe comes to realize that the new bourgeois society, which was founded on the ruins of feudal Europe, is far from the ideal. Confronted by the complex knot of problems of the 19th century, Goethe preserved the optimism of the Enlightenment, but projected it onto future generations, for whom free labor in a free world will be possible. People should work and struggle in the name of this bright future. “Those only are of life and freedom worthy/Who go forth every day to battle for them.” That is the final conclusion of Goethe’s optimistic tragedy.

In the words of Heine, the death of Goethe marked the end of German literature’s “artistic period,” a term that meant that the interests of art had prevailed at that time over those of society and politics.

Soviet literary scholarship has worked fruitfully to assimilate Goethe’s heritage. In prerevolutionary Russia, Goethe was studied and translated beginning in the 18th century. Among those who translated his works were V. A. Zhukov-skii, the poets of Pushkin’s circle, F. I. Tiutchev, K. S. Aksakov, N. P. Ogarev, M. Iu. Lermontov, and A. A. Fet. There are 23 Russian translations of the first part of Faust. The first Russian translation of Faust was done in 1838 by E. I. Guber. The translations of Faust by N. A. Kholodov-skii and B. L. Pasternak are generally considered the best. Among those who have translated Goethe’s poetry are N. N. Vil’mont and V. V. Levik.

E. Delacroix’s illustrations of Faust are widely known. Beethoven composed music on the Egmont theme in 1810, and Gounod wrote the opera Faust in 1859. Other works on the Faust theme include A. Boito’s opera Mefistofele (1868) and Hector Berlioz’ oratorio The Damnation of Faust (1846).

Goethe did work in the natural sciences on comparative plant and animal morphology, physics (optics and acoustics), mineralogy, geology, and meteorology. His morphological research had the greatest historical significance. In his Essay on the Metamorphosis of Plants (1790) he observed signs of structural similarity between different plant organs. In the field of comparative animal anatomy Goethe discovered the premaxillary bone in human beings in 1784 and published his findings in 1820 with other anatomical studies in a memoir entitled Problems of Morphology. In this work he presented, among other things, his theory that the skull originated out of vertebrae that had grown together. The very term “morphology” originated with Goethe. His objections to Newton’s discovery of the complex nature of white light were mistaken, but his work on the theory of colors still has historical significance, chiefly in the areas of physiology and the psychology of vision. Goethe’s views on the structural unity of plant and animal organisms make it possible to regard him as a predecessor of Darwin.