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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Followers (7,019)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Born

in Frankfurt am Main, Germany

August 28, 1749

Died

March 22, 1832

Genre

Fiction, Poetry, Science

Influences

Friedrich Schiller, Emanuel Swedenborg, Immanuel Kant, Gotthold Ephrai ...more

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A master of poetry, drama, and the novel, German writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spent 50 years on his two-part dramatic poem Faust , published in 1808 and 1832, also conducted scientific research in various fields, notably botany, and held several governmental positions.

George Eliot called him "Germany's greatest man of letters... and the last true polymath to walk the earth." Works span the fields of literature, theology, and humanism.
People laud this magnum opus as one of the peaks of world literature. Other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther .

With this key figure of German literature, th A master of poetry, drama, and the novel, German writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spent 50 years on his two-part dramatic poem Faust , published in 1808 and 1832, also conducted scientific research in various fields, notably botany, and held several governmental positions.

George Eliot called him "Germany's greatest man of letters... and the last true polymath to walk the earth." Works span the fields of literature, theology, and humanism.
People laud this magnum opus as one of the peaks of world literature. Other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther .

With this key figure of German literature, the movement of Weimar classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries coincided with Enlightenment, sentimentality (Empfindsamkeit), Sturm und Drang, and Romanticism. The author of the scientific text Theory of Colours , he influenced Darwin with his focus on plant morphology. He also long served as the privy councilor ("Geheimrat") of the duchy of Weimar.

Goethe took great interest in the literatures of England, France, Italy, classical Greece, Persia, and Arabia and originated the concept of Weltliteratur ("world literature"). Despite his major, virtually immeasurable influence on German philosophy especially on the generation of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, he expressly and decidedly refrained from practicing philosophy in the rarefied sense.

Influence spread across Europe, and for the next century, his works inspired much music, drama, poetry and philosophy. Many persons consider Goethe the most important writer in the German language and one of the most important thinkers in western culture as well. Early in his career, however, he wondered about painting, perhaps his true vocation; late in his life, he expressed the expectation that people ultimately would remember his work in optics.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s books

Average rating: 3.75 · 372,343 ratings · 22,511 reviews · 13,364 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Sorrows of Young Werther 3.69 avg rating — 156,716 ratings — published 1774 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Faust, First Part 3.83 avg rating — 86,467 ratings — published 1808 — 845 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Faust 3.89 avg rating — 51,079 ratings — published 1808 — 2855 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Elective Affinities 3.68 avg rating — 13,889 ratings — published 1809 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Faust, Part Two by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, David Luke (Translator) 3.65 avg rating — 8,781 ratings — published 1832 — 360 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Iphigenie auf Tauris 3.17 avg rating — 8,791 ratings — published 1786 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship 3.77 avg rating — 3,513 ratings — published 1795 — 165 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Fausto / Werther 3.93 avg rating — 2,930 ratings — 22 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Faust: Parts I & II by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Eugène Delacroix (Illustrator), A. Kline (Translator) 3.81 avg rating — 2,560 ratings — published 1832 — 644 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Italian Journey by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, W.H. Auden (Translator), Elizabeth Wolff Mayer (Translator) 3.81 avg rating — 2,073 ratings — published 1816 — 303 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe…

Series by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Goethe’s Faust (8 books)
by

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

3.84 avg rating — 151,206 ratings

Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten (1 book)
by

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,

Leif Ludwig Albertsen (Herausgeber)

3.54 avg rating — 992 ratings

Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (3 books)
by

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

3.46 avg rating — 163 ratings

Quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (?)

“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

tags: art, good-life, music, poetry, self-improvement

4394 likes

“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

tags: inspiration

3948 likes

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

tags: art, beauty, music, wonder

2483 likes

See all Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's quotes »

Polls

November 2014 Old School Classic Poll

Which book would you like to read for our November 2014 Old School Classic Group Read?

1859, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, 489 pages

27 votes, 20.1%

1842, Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, 464 pages

24 votes, 17.9%

1872, Middlemarch by George Eliot, 904 pages

14 votes, 10.4%

1896, The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells, 157 pages

12 votes, 9.0%

1831, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo, 614 pages

12 votes, 9.0%

1774, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 149 pages

10 votes, 7.5%

1874, Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy, 480 pages

9 votes, 6.7%

1889, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain, 480 pages

9 votes, 6.7%

1764, The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, 125 pages

7 votes, 5.2%

1833, Eugénie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac, 200 pages

3 votes, 2.2%

1795, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 396 pages

3 votes, 2.2%

1874, The Temptation of St. Antony by Gustave Flaubert, 304 pages

2 votes, 1.5%

1885, Juan de La Rosa: Memoirs of the Last Soldier of the Independence Movement by Nataniel Aguirre, 368 pages

1 vote, 0.7%

1834, Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac, 370 pages

1 vote, 0.7%

1532, Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais, 1088 pages

0 votes, 0.0%

134 total votes

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