Goethe House
The Goethe House in the city of Frankfurt am Main was until 1795 the residence of the Goethe family.
history
Goethe's birthplace and memorial
Johann Wolfgang Goethe was born here on the Großer Hirschgraben in Frankfurt in 1749 . His parents' house at that time consisted of two narrow, interconnected half-timbered houses that were acquired by grandmother Cornelia Goethe in 1733 as a widow's residence. After her death, her father, the Imperial Councilor Johann Caspar Goethe , had a representative four-story building built in the late Baroque ( Rococo ) style over the cellars of the old houses in 1755/56 . Johann Wolfgang Goethe lived here - with the exception of his student years in Leipzig 1765/68 and Strasbourg 1770/71 - until he went to Weimar in 1775; he described his youth in his autobiography Poetry and Truth . In 1795, the mother, Catharina Elisabeth Goethe, sold the house and its furnishings because it was too difficult for her to manage after her father's death.
After the sale, the house passed through several private hands. The last owner had a small Goethe memorial room set up in the attic. When it was to be changed in 1863 by a major renovation , the Free German Hochstift , a scientific citizens' association founded by Otto Volger in 1859, succeeded in acquiring the house. It was gradually re-established based on the example of historical sources and Goethe's memoirs and made accessible to the public as one of the first poet memorials.
Astronomical clock
In 1746, Hofrat Wilhelm Friedrich Hüsgen had the Kinzing brothers build an astronomical clock in Neuwied according to their own plans . Hüsgen was a good friend of the Goethe family. The young Johann Wolfgang von Goethe got to know the clock in Hüsgen's house and was so impressed by it that about five decades later he remembered in poetry and truth about the "at least miraculous clock". In 1933 the Free Deutsche Hochstift was able to acquire the so-called Hüsgen watch for 2000 RM . The clock is presented today in the stairwell on the 2nd floor of the Goethe House.
War destruction and reconstruction
In the air raid on Frankfurt on March 22, 1944, the 112th anniversary of Goethe's death, the street in the Großer Hirschgraben was badly damaged and the Goethe House was also destroyed by aerial bombs . The faithful reconstruction by the architect Theo Kellner began as early as 1947 ; In 1951 the grand opening took place. The treasures of furniture, art and everyday objects, books, pictures and manuscripts that were stored away during the war were able to return home to Goethe's parents' house.
After 1945 there was a great debate about the usefulness of the reconstruction. City planning director Werner Hebebrand and city planning officer Eugen Blanck rejected the reconstruction of the Goethe House, as did the Catholic publicist Walter Dirks . A survey of architects and art historians by the Deutscher Werkbund Hessen in the spring of 1947 produced the same result, and the first issue of the magazine “ baukunst und werkform ” had published as a basic requirement for the reconstruction: “The destroyed heritage must not be historically reconstructed, it can only for new tasks in a new form. ”On the side of the“ reconstructionists ”stood, among others, the Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse , the philosopher Karl Jaspers and the industrialist Richard Merton, who had returned from emigration . Ultimately, the supporters of the reconstruction prevailed.
- Some of the interiors
The kitchen with water pump
Picture gallery
Bookcase
German Romantic Museum
The Goethe House belongs to the Free German Hochstift . This is also linked to the Goethe Museum, a picture gallery from the Goethe era. In 2018 it is to be integrated into the German Romantic Museum , which is being built on the neighboring property. The museum extension is part of the Goethehöfe urban development project , which also includes the modernization of the Cantate Hall as a new venue for the Fliegende Volksbühne as well as the construction of apartments and a café around a shared inner courtyard.
- Selection of paintings in the Goethe Museum
Goethe in the Campagna di Roma, painting by Karl Bennert, after JHW Tischbein
Christiane Vulpius, portrait drawing by JW von Goethe
Willow bushes when the sun is low, by Caspar David Friedrich
Nachtmahr, by Johann Heinrich Füssli
Anecdotal
According to an old Frankfurt anecdote, real Frankfurters are not interested in the Goethe House. Proof is the story of the dying Frankfurter who sends a quick prayer to heaven on his death bed: Liewer God, let me mix it with leewe - I'll go to the Geede house! ( Dear God, let me still live - I'll also go to the Goethe House for you ).
Exhibitions
- 2014: transformation of the world. The romantic arabesque . Catalog.
- 2015: Unboxing Goethe .
gallery
The Goethehaus in the middle of the 19th century
1958
Memorial plaque for Otto Volger
The Great Deer Pit
The Goethe fountain
.JPG)
literature
- Petra Maisak / Hans-Georg Dewitz: The Goethe House in Frankfurt am Main. Insel-taschenbuch 2225, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-458-33925-6 .
- Wolf-Christian Setzepfandt : Architecture Guide Frankfurt am Main / Architectural Guide . 3. Edition. Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-496-01236-6 , p. 16 (German, English).
- Michael Falser: The ›German Spirit‹ and the reconstruction of the Frankfurt Goethe House - the ruins of the spirit. In: Ders .: Between Identity and Authenticity. On the political history of monument preservation in Germany. Thelem Verlag, Dresden 2008, ISBN 978-3-939888-41-3 , pp. 82-87.
- HK: The house with the three lyres . In: The Gazebo . Issue 3 and 6, 1867, pp. 43–46, 84–88 ( full text [ Wikisource ] - illustrated).
Web links
- Website of the Goethe House
- The Goethe House. altfrankfurt.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ stadtplan.frankfurt.de
- ↑ The world was in pieces . In: FAZ , August 27, 2009
- ↑ These arabesques are tough . In: FAZ , January 8, 2014, p. 27
- ↑ The great poet, a bean counter . In: FAZ , August 31, 2015, p. 32
Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 40 ″ N , 8 ° 40 ′ 39 ″ E