Goethe's last trip

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1828, idealizing painting by Joseph Karl Stieler .

Goethe's last journey is a "documentary novel" written by the German writer and literary critic Sigrid Damm . The book deals with the last phase of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's life . It is particularly dedicated to his trip to Ilmenau in 1831.

The work was published in 2007 as a hardback edition by Insel Verlag , by the same publisher in January 2009 as a paperback edition and previously in March 2008 by Hoffmann and Campe as an audio book . The book quickly became bestsellers and reached in December 2007, number 16 of the mirror - seller list in the category non-fiction. It was 15th on the Focus bestseller list in December 2007.

Book genre

The book was not given any genre by the author Sigrid Damm and the publishing company Insel Verlag . The book review took up this in part and called the book, among other things, a "documentary novel" ( Radio Berlin 88.8 ) or a "documentary fiction" ( Goethe Yearbook No. 124 ), but also rated it in the figurative sense as a "generic book" ( Frankfurter Rundschau ). The German National Library as well as most of the other public libraries classify the book as a biography .

action

Sigrid Damm mainly describes Goethe's trip to Ilmenau in August 1831, which he undertook on his 82nd birthday, half a year before his death, with two grandchildren. It became “Goethe's last journey”. In the six travel days that provide the framework for Damm's book, Goethe looks back on his life. He remembers, among other things, his wife Christiane and the Bohemian baths , where he experienced love for the last time and became aware of his age with despair when he was rejected by the young Ulrike von Levetzow .

But Damm also describes everyday life and describes little-known aspects of Goethe's life.

August 26, 1831, arrival

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was 81 years old when he set out on his last journey from Weimar on August 26, 1831, two days before his 82nd birthday . It takes him to Ilmenau together with his grandchildren, 13-year-old Walter Wolfgang and ten-year-old Wolfgang Maximilian - called "Wolf" or "Wölfchen". The boys are the sons of his son August von Goethe, who died at the age of 40 last year, and his wife Ottilie .

After 1823, Goethe only rarely left his place of residence in Weimar, mostly to the surrounding area, to Jena, and in 1828 to the Dornburg palaces . In 1823 he was in Bohemia, in Karlsbad and Marienbad . There he had fallen in love with the young Ulrike von Levetzow two years earlier, who did not reciprocate his feelings. Sigrid Damm calls the year 1823 “the year of the turning point”.

Replica of the “Goldener Löwe” inn in Ilmenau , where Goethe moved into quarters on his last trip.

The trip to Ilmenau, half a year before Goethe's death, is both a look back and a farewell, a “pilgrimage to the places of earlier sorrows and joys” in Goethe's words. It is also an examination of aging and death.

Goethe and the grandchildren who travel by carriage are accompanied by the 24-year-old coachman Wilhelm Heinrich König and the 26-year-old servant Gottlieb Friedrich Krause. It will be a journey into the past, a return to a place where young Goethe failed. "Like no other place in his life, Ilmenau is an experimental field for his social utopia."

There, on behalf of his Duke Carl August , Goethe had tried in vain from 1777, initially as "Mining Commisar" and from 1780 as Head of the "Direction over all mining matters in all our Princely Lands", the one in the Ilmenau office since the middle of the 15th century to revive flourishing silver and copper mining by 1739.

Although a mine was opened in 1784 after many setbacks in Goethe's presence and with his only public speech , the company was abandoned in 1796 after a severe water ingress in the Martinsröder tunnel. Goethe failed to fill the principality's coffers by extracting raw materials, to give the people of the Ilmenau office a livelihood through mining, but he had trained himself to become a specialist in the field of geology : “I have these sciences because my office has me entitled to surrender with complete passion [...]. "

In his notes he covered a cloak of silence about the business failure; He did not visit Ilmenau again until 1813.

On the evening of August 26, 1831, the tour company arrives in Ilmenau, after a lunch stop at the “Zum Hirschen” inn in Stadtilm and a stop at Gräfinau , where Goethe walks a bit. In Ilmenau, like before, he moved into the “Zum Goldenen Löwen” inn and retired early.

August 27, 1831, on the Kickelhahn

The so-called “Goethehäuschen”, a replica of the hunting lodge on the Kickelhahn , in which Goethe wrote in 1783 “There is peace over all peaks”. He returned there in 1831 in a "light chaise".

The next morning, Goethe and the rent agent Johann Heinrich Christian Mahr , whom he has known since 1825, take a trip up the 861 meter high Kickelhahn in a “light chaise” . In 1783 Goethe wrote the poem “ Above all peaks is peace ” in a hunting lodge on its plateau in pencil on a wall of the wooden house, which has recently been reconstructed as the “Goethe House”.

He sends his grandchildren up the mountain on foot with Servant Krause. Goethe is happy about the now well-developed path and "remembered the time in which one could only have come on horseback in these places."

He remembers shared stays in Ilmenau with Carl August with wild drinking sessions, hunts in which the duke ruthlessly exploited his hunting privilege and devastated fields: “The duke goes out on deer, I go out on landscapes.” Johann Heinrich Voss kept rumors from this time firmly: "The Duke runs around with Göthen like a wild Pursche in the villages, he gets drunk and enjoys fraternally indifferent girls with him."

In 1783, on his 26th birthday, Goethe dedicated the poem “ Ilmenau ” to his duke and employer, starting with “Graceful valley, you evergreen grove”. The two men are linked by a friendship lasting 53 years with demonstrative mutual expressions of appreciation, despite the age difference and despite the crises between “prince and poet prince”.

In the 50th year of his accession to power, Goethe hosted a lavish festival for his duke on September 3, 1825. And on November 11th, 1825, 50 years after Goethe's arrival in Weimar, Duke Carl August stated in writing: "I therefore recognize the fiftieth return of this day with the most lively pleasure as the service celebration of my first civil servant, my childhood friend [...]." Goethe I have accompanied him in all vicissitudes of life with unchanged loyalty, inclination and constancy. He owed the happy success of the most important undertakings to his careful advice, his lively participation and pleasant service.

On the Kickelhahn Goethe sees his poem again and notes in the diary in the evening: “The old inscription was recognized: above all peaks there is Ruh pp. September 7th, 1783. “However, according to Sigrid Damm, Goethe was neither in Ilmenau nor on the Kickelhahn on September 7th, although he was there from August 30th to September 3rd or 4th, 1783. According to Mahr, reading the poem moves Goethe to tears. In a gentle, wistful tone he said "Yes: just wait, you will soon be resting too!" Sigrid Damm said: "[...] he reads his night song as a death song."

At noon, Goethe and Mahr are back from the mountain. In the afternoon Goethe remains alone; Mahr accompanies the grandchildren to the Kammerberg coal mine.

August 28, 1831, the last birthday

The grandchildren visit Elgersburg Castle (entrance gate)
Ulrike von Levetzow , Goethe's last love: Goethe takes a gift from her on his journey.

The next day, August 28, 1831, is Goethe's 82nd birthday. In the morning at five o'clock a brass band under the direction of the Ilmenauer Stadtmusicus plays the chorale “ Nun danket alle Gott ”. Goethe is already on his feet and "fifteen women in white dresses" bring a poem and a wreath on a pillow.

Goethe has breakfast with Wolf, while his brother is still sleeping. Goethe wishes to go on a trip with his grandchildren and Friedrich August von Fritsch. The son of his former Weimar opponent, Freiherr Jakob Friedrich von Fritsch , who had vainly opposed the Duke's employment of the bourgeois Goethe, had become forest master in Ilmenau in 1794, made a career in the Principality of Weimar and had been its chief district hunter since 1828.

The evening before, Fritsch had traveled from Weimar on an official mission to convey the principality's birthday wishes to Goethe.

The birthday party drives in two carriages to Elgersburg , where the children visit the porcelain factory and the castle without their grandfather. Via Martinroda it goes back to Ilmenau. The afternoon of his birthday goes by with the reception of Ilmenau dignitaries, "Allerley Post" arrives from Weimar. While the grandsons go on another excursion, Goethe stays alone with reading until evening.

The birthday ends with evening music by the Kammerberger miners' union. It is a quiet feast day for Goethe, who enjoyed celebrating in his younger years, and for which Friedrich August von Fritsch hosted a banquet for his 68th birthday in the ruins of the Paulinzella monastery .

Sigrid Damm closes the chapter with a look back at Goethe's late, unrequited love for Ulrike von Levetzow, who was 53 years his junior and whom he met again in Marienbad in 1821, after he had felt drawn to her mother Amalie von Levetzow in 1806.

In memory of July and August 1821 in the Bohemian spa town and the summers of 1822 and 1823 there, he had taken a Bohemian glass with him to Ilmenau, which Amalie von Levetzow, daughter Ulrike and her sister had given him on August 28, 1823, eight years earlier with the engraving of their names.

Sigrid Damm calls the rejected love the "fall into the abyss of old age". After being rejected, Goethe buried himself in work with the “Marienbader Elegy” - creativity as a therapeutic agent for the soul, but his health suffered this year, among other things, from threatening heart problems.

August 29, 1831, meeting with old friends

The day begins with a horror for Goethe: Wolf had fallen out of bed at night, Goethe finds him lying on the floor of the room. Sigrid Damm describes the grandfather's relationship with his grandchildren, whose upbringing and training he has been intensively concerned with, and not just since the death of her father, and speaks of the “standard of Goethe” and the “burden of the big name”. Grandchildren are measured by his name. Goethe's genius had also undermined her father's self-esteem.

The "good Walther" sleeps off like on the two days before. Goethe has breakfast again early in the morning at six o'clock with Wolfchen. The planned excursion for the grandchildren cannot take place due to heavy rain. After Walter got up too, they visit a doll factory with Rentamtmann Mahr and Friedrich August von Fritsch. Goethe stays behind at the inn, sends diary entries to his widowed daughter-in-law Ottilie in Weimar. The grandchildren return at noon.

Goethe, Walter, Wölfchen and Mahr have lunch in the "Alte Försterei" with the forest master König. Goethe then visited Heinrich Georg Wilhelm Hetzer (1752–1832) in the neighborhood, who, like Goethe, was born in Frankfurt am Main, when he entered Weimar's service, and now has the rank of court commissioner. Goethe has known him at least since 1784. He later wrote about him in a letter, “Good contemporaries had aged”. Sigrid Damm states: "[...] as if the process of aging did not affect him [...]".

The weather has improved at noon; Walter and Wolfchen can still visit the iron foundry in the Gehren office . After returning to the inn, Goethe reads Karl Herzog's “History of German national literature with samples of German poetry and eloquence”, as in the days before.

August 30, 1831, traveling alone

In Tannroda, Goethe visits Carl August Schwerdgeburth on his return journey.

In the mornings, Goethe goes out alone and enjoys the avenues of lime trees, where he was present 50 years earlier. The grandchildren visit glassblowers in Stützerbach . After lunch, grandfather and grandson are out and about together. Goethe asks whether the house in which he wrote Iphigenia in Tauris is still standing . He decides to leave the next morning and the packing begins. The grandchildren present him with collected stones; Goethe finds nothing of importance here.

August 31, 1831, journey home

Goethe and his companion start their journey home in a carriage at half past six in the morning, and around eleven o'clock they take their lunch break in Stadtilm. Via Großhettstedt , Dienstedt , Barchfeld , Kranichfeld there is another stop in Tannroda . There the tour group visits the painter and engraver Carl August Schwerdgeburth . Then it goes on to Weimar via Bad Berka . Goethe closes his travel diary with the note that one had arrived in Weimar after six o'clock in the evening.

A little later he wrote to his Berlin friend Zelter about these days:

“After so many years one could overlook: the permanent, the vanished. What was successful stepped forward, what failed was forgotten and forgotten. "

After returning home, he has 202 days left. He dies on March 22, 1832.

reception

The listed Goethe fountain in the Ilmenau cemetery with a relief by Wilhelm Löber .
The Goethe Monument in Ilmenau (bronze sculpture by Klaus Glutting).

Sigrid Damm's work was not consistently received positively by German-language feature articles , but approval prevailed.

The Frankfurter Rundschau (FR) certified the author that it was not a completely accusatory book , but the FR critic Sven Hanuschek described it as a generic book that was already another glorification of Goethe . He draws the conclusion: Anyone who knows the sources or has even read a few volumes of Goethe's letter will not learn anything new from Damm's book. However, Germanists are not their intended audience, rather people to whom historical sources themselves do not speak .

The Berliner Zeitung rates the book as clever without being precocious, sensitive without being kitschy . The story had courage to leave gaps , in the thoughts sometimes have only Tagged character and unconnected remains what does not want to join . Sigrid Damm let Goethe's world of thought become completely present. How she does it requires respect and admiration .

The Welt am Sonntag took Goethe's last trip in December 2007 in the list of "35 best books of the year" and called it a sensitive, clever book about the late Goethe .

Tilman Kause wrote in Die Welt of a life-wise, warm-hearted book by Sigrid Damm: The deep connection with her subject speaks unobtrusively from every line. The inquiring interest of aging people, how a very old man coped with life, may have played a role. Why not? A solution to this problem awaits many of us .

For Radio Berlin 88.8 , Goethe's last journey is a documentary novel, no harm for education, but a gain for entertainment.

Publications

Books

  • Sigrid Damm: Goethe's Last Journey . 1st edition, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-458-17370-0 .
  • Sigrid Damm: Goethe's Last Journey . 1st edition of the paperback edition, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009 (= Insel-Taschenbuch; 3300), ISBN 978-3-458-35000-2 .

Audio books

  • Goethe's last journey (sound carrier). Reading . By: Sigrid Damm, with: Hartmut Schories, director: Gabriela von Sallwitz, Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-455-30585-2 . (Audio book; abridged version by the author; 5 CDs with booklet)

Radio

  • Goethe's last journey (radio production). Reading . By: Sigrid Damm, with: Jutta Hoffmann , director and abridged reading version: Matthias Thalheim, 13 episodes of 30 minutes each, reading time, December 9th to 23rd, MDR Figaro 2010

Secondary literature

  • Goethe Society (Ed.): Goethe Yearbook, Volume 122 . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2007, ISSN  0323-4207 , pp. 328-331.
  • Georg Schwedt: Goethe - the manager . Wiley-VCH Verlag, Weinheim 2008, ISBN 978-3-527-50369-8 , p. 7ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Der Spiegel , issue 51/2007 of December 17, 2007, p. 172.
  2. ↑ Focus bestseller list from December 12, 2007, accessed on September 24, 2009.
  3. ↑ a b Monika Burghard: Goethe's last journey  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Radio Berlin 88.8 of June 15, 2008, accessed on September 24, 2009.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.radioberlin.de  
  4. ^ Sabine Doering: Sigrid Damm: Goethe's last journey . Review in: Goethe-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Goethe-Jahrbuch, Volume 122 . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2007, pp. 328–331.
  5. ↑ a b Sven Hanuschek: Soup with sausage and lentils asparagus . In: Frankfurter Rundschau of December 11, 2007, accessed on September 24, 2009.
  6. ^ Sigrid Damm: Goethe's last journey . Insel-Taschenbuch-Edition 2009, p. 26.
  7. ↑ Quoted from Sigrid Damm: Goethe's last journey . 2009, p. 181.
  8. ^ Sigrid Damm: Goethe's last journey . 2009, p. 56.
  9. ↑ Goethe in a letter of October 11, 1780 to Johann Heinrich Merck , quoted from Sigrid Damm: Goethe's Last Journey , Insel-Taschenbuch-Ausgabe 2009, p. 71.
  10. ↑ Quoted from Sigrid Damm: Goethe's last journey . 2009, p. 114.
  11. ↑ Quoted from Sigrid Damm: Goethe's last journey . 2009, p. 116.
  12. ↑ Quoted from Sigrid Damm: Goethe's last journey . 2009, p. 117.
  13. ^ Sigrid Damm: Goethe's last journey . 2009, p. 121.
  14. ↑ Quoted from Sigrid Damm: Goethe's last journey . 2009, p. 122.
  15. ↑ Quoted from Sigrid Damm: Goethe's last journey . 2009, p. 141.
  16. ^ Sigrid Damm: Goethe's last journey . 2009, p. 143.
  17. ^ Sigrid Damm: Goethe's last journey . 2009, p. 213.
  18. ^ Sigrid Damm: Goethe's last journey . 2009, p. 241.
  19. ↑ Quoted from Sigrid Damm: Goethe's last journey . 2009, p. 249.
  20. ^ Sigrid Damm: Goethe's last journey . 2009, p. 249.
  21. ↑ Goethe's letters, Hamburg edition 1962-1967 by KR Mandelkow, letter no. 1505.
  22. ↑ Uta Beiküfner: What did he have for breakfast? ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Berliner Zeitung of February 1, 2008, accessed on September 24, 2009. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.berlinonline.de
  23. ^ Elmar Krekeler, Matthias Wulff: The best 35 books of the year . In: Welt am Sonntag on December 2, 2007, accessed on September 24, 2009.
  24. ^ Tilman Kraus: The success came out . In: Die Welt from November 10, 2007, accessed on September 24, 2009.