The German Genius

Lotte’s husband’s pistols. An “editor” then “gathers” his letters and publishes them with the occasional comment.
    Werther was almost immediately translated into every major European language, but the cult of the book went much wider. In Vienna there was a Werther fireworks display and in London there was Werther wallpaper. Meissen porcelain was designed, showing Werther scenes, and in Paris perfumières sold Eau de Werther. In Italy there was a Werther opera. Napoleon took the French translation with him on his Egyptian adventure in 1798 and, Hulse says, “when he met the author in 1808 he told him he had read the book seven times” (though he also added some criticisms). 16
    Not everyone shared the rapture. There were those who thought the novel risked sparking a suicide epidemic, but the fear of a wave of Liebestode seems to have been exaggerated. In Leipzig, nevertheless, the book was banned, as it was in Denmark. Elsewhere the book was derided, one critic suggesting sarcastically that “The smell of pancake is a more powerful reason for remaining in this world than all young Werther’s supposedly lofty conclusions are for quitting it.” Now that the dust has settled, Werther has come to be regarded as “the first great tragic novel, a work of exhilarating style and insight.” 17
    Despite Goethe’s fame, despite the turbulence his novel sparked across Europe, his friendship with Karl August was solid and genuine, and the writer joined in readily with those activities of the court that the younger man enjoyed—in particular, riding, shooting, and dancing. Bit by bit, however, Goethe’s very presence induced a change, and he began reading from his works in progress (most of what he wrote, he read aloud to friends), in particular his unfinished Faust (the Urfaust as it is now called). 18
    Time was passing and after about a year, when it was becoming clear that Goethe’s “visit” was no such thing, Karl August moved to bring his friend closer still. Goethe was persuaded to join in another popular aspect of court life: amateur theatricals. 19 In this way he became the prince’s unofficial maître des plaisirs , and it was this appointment, informal to begin with, that shaped Goethe’s immediate future and, indeed, that of Weimar, as other—more onerous and more responsible—duties followed. More than one historian has observed that Karl August’s liking for Goethe owed rather more to his personal qualities than to his fame and skill as a writer. (Jürgen Habermas reminds us that Weimar was a special case, that most men of letters were little more than servants at that stage.) Goethe’s elevation at court was not universally welcomed (he was considered a “half-baked Voltairian know-all” by some), but the prince was an absolute monarch in an age of absolutism—and that was that. 20
    The big change, from Goethe’s point of view, came in June 1776, when he was appointed a member of Karl August’s conseil , or Privy Council, which consisted of the duke and three advisers. Goethe was required to take an oath of allegiance, and that gave him the right to wear a distinctive laced coat. 21 Now his duties widened further. He took on the mining commission, the military commission, and was even made temporary head of the treasury. He was involved in road-building schemes and helped devise a new system of taxation. By all accounts, Goethe was a safe pair of hands, invariably aware of what was and was not practicable, and this transformed his popularity and made him respected. He was one of those responsible for the belief in Germany that “intellectuals need not live in ivory towers with their heads in the clouds.” 22
    Goethe gained a lot from being in Weimar. Being forced to involve himself in mining, he found he needed to develop his interests in, and knowledge of, chemistry, botany, and mineralogy, and this moved him in the direction of science more generally. He was soon collecting plants and studying Carl Linnaeus’s Philosophia botanica . Goethe exchanged a number of letters with Linnaeus and at the same time asked Karl August to send one of his assistants, J. C. W. Voigt, for training at the Freiberg Academy of Mining in Saxony, run by the foremost mineralogist of the day, Abraham Gottlob Werner. (Werner, who visited Goethe in late summer 1789, is considered in Chapter 7.) Later Goethe turned to anatomy, which he studied under Professor Loder in Jena and then passed on, in his own