Germany in the Eighteenth Century: Background to Goethe’s Faust

LIT 181Hour 10

Where was Germany in the 18th Century?

Germany in 1789

Prussia• Prussia, capital in

Berlin / Potsdam• Friedrich the Great• Codification of law• Freedom of press &

religion• Roundtable of

advisors, included Voltaire

• Influence of French culture is strong

Austria

Austria – ethnic diversity

War of Austrian Succession• Pragmatic Sanction –

Emperor Charles VI ensured his daughter Maria Theresa would inherit an intact Hapsburg Empire

• Silesian Wars of the 1740’s

• Seven Years’ War (1756-1763)

Maria Theresa, 1717-1780

Frankfurt am Main• An important

western German city

• Center of trade and culture

• Post WWII: became the banking center of Germany

• Goethe was born here on August 28th, 1749.

Goethe’s House in Frankfurt

Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe

• “Shakespeare of Germany”

• Last “Renaissance” person = he knew everything that was to be known.

• Collected works = 144 volumes in every intellectual field of the late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries.

Goethe: so let’s all pronounce his name!

• “`gay tuh” & round your lips on the “ay”

• Known primarily for Faust, but also wrote huge numbers of poems, novels, novellas, stories, plays, epics, epigrams, ballads songs, occasional verse, letters, etc.

Goethe (how is that name pronounced, one more time?????)

• Conducted experiments in scientific areas

• “The Metamorphosis of Plants”

• Treatise on how the eye recognizes color – still important in optics

College years• Attended university in

Leipzig, studied law, grew ill in 2nd yr. & came home

• While convalescing, met a pietist woman, became a devoté, spoke and wrote the “language of feeling.”

• Became interested in the writings of Herder.

Goethe as a young man

Susanna von Klettenberg

Johann Gottfried Herder 1744-1803

• Philosopher: folk language, folk culture and folk literature

• Ideas formed the core of the German movement called “Storm and Stress” (Sturm und Drang)

Herder (cont’d)

• Took a trip in 1769: Journal of My Voyage of 1769

• Suffered from bad eyesight

• Left the ship in France, travelled to Strassburg to have an operation on his cataracts

Herder in Strassburg

• Ouch! – anesthesia then wasn’t what it is now.

• Goethe went to see him there and ask him, “what should I do?”

• Herder tells him: go out into the country and collect folk literature.

• He does this, and it sets him on the path to becoming the most important literary figure ever in Germany.

Storm & Stress (Sturm und Drang)1770-1775 (1786)• Name of a play by

Friedrich Maximilian Klinger

• Primarily group of young men, especially in Göttingen

• Emphasized strong emotion (against the Enlightenment emphasis on reason)

The Sorrows of Young Werther(1774)

• Story of young man, overwhelmed by unrequited love, commits suicide

• Greatest best seller in Germany before the 20th century, Goethe gains an international reputation

• People started dressing and acting like Werther all over Europe!

Women in Goethe’s life

• From Goethe’s autobiography Poetry and Truth, we know several women exerted major influence on his early work

• Friederike Brion, whom Goethe left

• Charlotte Buff, who was engaged to another man and “rebuffed” Goethe’s advances

1775: Duke Karl August “invites” Goethe

• Goethe should come to Weimar and be the Duke’s Prime Minister

• Goethe accepts• Until 1786 Goethe

works full time as PM and at night must ride out with the Duke on hunting forays – this starts to wear on him.

Weimar: center of culture• Karl August begins to

invite the major intellectual figures of Germany to his court at Weimar, including Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, and others

• As a young man he liked to stay out all night carousing with the guys. For Goethe, it eventually proves too much!

Goethe works in Weimar until 1786

• Then he leaves for Italy & stays there until 1788

• His “Italian Journey” begins the “classical” period in German literature

• “noble simplicity, quiet grandeur”

Italy for Goethe

• Goethe learns how to “feel” through the senses & to write with great power & beauty

• J. J. Winckelmann’s (1717-1768) Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and in Sculpture

After Italy, Goethe returns to Weimar• Beginning of

friendship with Schiller

• Schiller: Germany’s greatest dramatist

• Maid of Orleans, Maria Stuart, Wilhelm Tell

• Schiller dies of tuberculosis in 1805

Goethe lives in Weimar until 1832• Novels: Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship,

Elective Affinities• Poetry: West-Eastern Divan, Roman

Elegies• Plays: Iphigenia in Tauris, Torquato Tasso,

EgmontHis most famous work is the story of the

professor and performer of black magic, Johann Faustus – in two parts, we will read only part 1 and I will fill you in on part 2.

1587: Faust Book in Leipzig: Johann Spiess

• Volksbuch = “Chapbook” • Episodes from anecdotes, jokes

and stories popular back then, tied together through the personality of the professor who wants to be wealthy and loved, and so offers his soul to the devil in exchange for favors.

• Enables the reader to enjoy the “sins” vicariously, and then to hear the rebuke that “a good Christian would never act this way…

Faustus• Name means something

like “fortunate one”• Actual university

professor/alchemist in Leipzig during the fifteenth century

• Rumors and stories of his ability to conjure up the dead, to fly, and to place spells on people

• This was the time of the witchhunts, heresy and inquisition in Germany

Faust• Spiess Volksbuch

creates this “type”: a talented artist, famous person, or intellectual strikes a bargain with the devil: in exchange for his immortal soul he gains fabulous wealth or is empowered to perform marvelous feats, travel to exotic lands, etc.

Christopher Marlowe’s Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Follows Spiess’

Chapbook well (available in English translation).

• After 20 years, devil comes to Faustus and demands his due

• Faustus is torn apart by a throng of hell’s emissaries

Faust’s literary transmission:

• As a puppet play though the 17th Century – Goethe as a child first saw the Faust story this way

• Lessing, a German dramatist, tried his hand at Faust in the 1750’s

Goethe, Faust

• Begun 1771, took over 60 years to complete

• Spans all major intellectual movements of the 18th & early 19th centuries

• 2 parts, part 1 appears in 1806, part 2 in Goethe’s final year, 1832

• Part 1 = microcosm, Part 2 = macrocosm• Not a “pact” = contract, but rather a

wager

After Goethe’s Faust

• Chamisso’s “Peter Schlemihl’s Marvelous Story”

• “The Devil and Daniel Webster” by Stephen Vincent Benet

• Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus

“Bedazzled”

Who is this devil Mephistopheles?

• What is the devil? – personification of evil?

• Biblical personage in opposition to God?

• Some minion of hell who wants your soul?

• Image = largely based on Dionysus / Bacchus or on a satyr = cloven hoof, horns, tail, hair, unruly, lusty etc.

History of the Devil (Jeffrey Burton Russell)

• Devil = antiquity to primitive christianity

• Satan = early christianity

History of the Devil (Jeffrey Burton Russell)

• Lucifer = Middle Ages

• Mephistopheles = the modern devil

Each age fashions the masks of its devils as it chooses to view its own evils

Goethe in Italy: in the Giardino Botanico Padua• Sitting beneath a

palm tree, he contemplated the structure of the leaf, the branch and the trunk, and at that moment realized the interrelation among all parts of the art work on this same organic model

Chamaerops humilis, the Goethe Palm,

planted 1585

HOW DO YOU KEEP A TREE HEALTHY?

• Good soil, • Good fertilizer, • Good place in the sun• Pruning… • What???? Doesn’t this kill the plant?

Cutting it’s leaves and branches, isn’t this amputation?

HOW DO YOU MAKE YOUR MUSCLES HEALTHY?• Exercise? Doesn’t that

actually destroy muscle tissue?

• Scar tissue – why would anyone want it? Because that is what goes into making your muscle bigger

• Working out with weights – tears down healthy tissue, then the healing process makes them stronger, fitter, more capable of doing more, for a longer period of time.

Also: Think of some of the other works we have read…

• How is Faust like Dante?• Think of Don Quixote &

Sancho, or Candide & Pangloss? … are these pairs anything like Faust & Mephistopheles?

• Think about some of the heroines we have encountered: Iseult, Beatrice, Teresa Panza, Madame Jourdain, Cunigonde.