GOETHAL-S 



An important weekly fair is held 

 at which the quaint costumes of 

 the surrounding districts may be 

 seen. Pop. 6,600. 



Goethals, GEORGE WASHINGTON 

 (b. 1858). American soldier and 

 engineer. Born at Brooklyn and 

 educated at the military academy 

 of West Point, he specialised in 

 military engineering, and did good 

 service in that branch in the 

 Spanish-American War of 1898. 

 He was also employed on weir 

 and harbour work. In 1907 

 Goethals was given charge of 

 the construction of the Panama 



3579 



Canal, a task demanding not 

 only technical skill but high ad- 

 ministrative qualities, which he 

 fulfilled with 

 admirable 

 success, the 

 canal being 

 virtually com- 

 pleted some six 

 months before 

 the scheduled 

 date of June 1, 

 1915. In Dec., 

 G. W. Goethals, 1917, he was 

 American soldier appointed 

 acting quartermaster- general. 



GOETHE: HIS CAREER AND INFLUENCE 



J. G. Robertson, Prof, of German Literature, London TTniv, 



This article is supplemented by those on Germany : Literature ; 



Drama ; Poetry. See also the biographies of Heine ; Schiller, and 



other German poets 



Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 

 Germany's greatest poet, was born 

 at Frankfort-on-Main, Aug. 28, 

 1749. Of good family, he received 

 a liberal education at the hands of 

 tutors, and studied law at the 

 university of Leipzig and subse- 

 quently at Strasbourg. In the 

 latter town, under the guidance of 

 Herder, he learned to appreciate 

 the beauties of Gothic architecture, 

 the German Volkslied, and the 

 greatness of Shakespeare ; his 

 genius was thereby awakened, and 

 under the influence of his love for 

 Friederike Brion, daughter of the 

 pastor of a neighbouring Alsatian 

 village, his lyric powers revealed 

 their full strength. With Gotz von 

 Berlichingen, 1773, Goethe gave 

 the new literary movement of 

 Storm and Stress its first tragedy, 

 and with Werthers Leiden, 1774, its 

 typical novel. To this period also 

 belongs the drama Clavigo, 1774, 

 works, in- 

 orm of the 

 drama of Faust. 



Goethe and Weimar 



Before settling down as an advo- 

 cate in Frankfort, Goethe spent 

 some months at Wetzlar, then the 

 seat of the supreme German law 

 courts. His plans for a career were, 

 however, soon upset ; at the end of 

 1775 he accepted an invitation to 

 visit Karl August, duke of Saxe- 

 Weimar, and Weimar remained his 

 home for life. He won the duke's 

 confidence, and before long was 

 entrusted, as his minister, with the 

 conduct of state affairs. These 

 duties and the claims of social life 

 interfered for a time with his liter- 

 ary work, and he published little ; 

 but under the inspiration of Char- 

 lotte von Stein, whose influence is 

 immediately apparent in his lyrics, 

 all the greater works of the next 

 twenty years of his life were 

 planned and begun. 



and other fragmentary 

 eluding the earliest foi 



The years 1786-88 Goethe spent 

 in Italy, a stay which made a deep 

 incision in his literary life ; in the 

 course of these years the dramas of 

 Iphigenie auf Tauris, 1787, and 

 Egmont, 1788, were completed, 

 and Torquato Tasso, 1790, in great 

 part written. On his return to 

 Germany disappointment with 

 home conditions for a time lamed 

 his powers, and he produced little 

 of importance; but in 1794 he 

 came into personal contact with 

 Schiller, and a mutually inspiring 

 affection united the two men until 

 the younger poet's death in 1805. In 

 this period Goethe completed his 



After J. K. Slieler 



greatest novel, Wilhelm Meisters 

 Lehrjahre, 1795-96, and, in friendly 

 rivalry with Schiller, wrote several 

 of his finest ballads. In 1797 he 

 published Hermann und Dorothea, 

 the most perfect idyll in German 

 literature. 



Goethe also threw himself zea- 

 lously into scientific pursuits. Here 



GOETHE 



bis discovery of a rudimentary in- 

 ter-maxillary bone in man and his 

 suggestive theory of plant-develop- 

 ment from the basic leaf -form pre- 

 pared the way for the Darwinian 

 theory of evolution, while his 

 studies in optics resulted in a new 

 theory of colours. The last period 

 of Goethe's life is comparatively 

 uneventful. In 1788 he had found 

 a congenial helpmate in Christiane 

 Vulpius, who, although of all the 

 women Goethe loved least to be 

 regarded as his intellectual equal, 

 inspired a lasting affection; in 

 1806 he made her his wife. .-' * 



His principal works in this 

 period were the first part of Faust, 

 1808 ; Die Wahlverwandtschaften, 

 18C9, a psychological " problem " 

 novel ; Der Westostliche Divan, 

 1819, a collection of poetry in an 

 oriental mould which showed that. 

 in spite of his years, his lyric 

 powers were still undiminished ; 

 and Wilhelm Meisters Wander- 

 jahre, 1821, a continuation of the 

 earlier novel. In 1811 he com- 

 menced the publication of his auto- 

 biography, Aus meinem Leben : 

 Dichtung und Wahrheit, which, 

 however, was not carried beyond 

 the year 1775, although other 

 works, such as Die Italienische 

 Reise, 1816, etc., may be regarded 

 as a continuation. 



In the very last year of his life 

 he put the finishing touches to the 

 second part of Faust, 1832. As his 

 interest in this theme went back 

 to the very beginnings of his 

 literary life, and the kernel of the 

 first part, the tragedy of Faust and 

 Gretchen, was written in his pre- 

 Weimar clays, Faust may be said, 

 in a very literal sense, to have 

 accompanied Goethe all through 

 life. He died at Weimar, March 

 22, 1832. 



Goethe's Place in Literature 



It is difficult in a brief summary 

 to estimate Goethe's significance 

 for his own literature and that of 

 Europe. The most striking features 

 in his life are the universality of 

 his genius, the enormous range of 

 his intellectual sympathies, and the 

 sincerity and sanity of his judge- 

 ment of men and things. He 

 was not tempted into false paths 

 by the materialistic tendencies of 

 the age of rationalism into which 

 he was born, nor did he lose him- 

 self in the maze of metaphysical 

 subtleties of the romantic epoch. 



His supreme achievement, it has 

 ""been often said, was the life he 

 lived ; supreme, not on account of 

 any exemplary morality, but rather 

 because he saw all his experience 

 in the light of a moral education, 

 as so much material out of which 

 he might build up, as he said, the 

 pyramid of his life and personal! ty. 



