BELFAST 



NATURAL HISTORY 

 AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 



SESSION 1906-7. 



13th November, igo6. 



Address by the President, Sir Otto Jaffe, J.P. 



WEIMAR AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS WITH 

 GOETHE AND SCHILLER, 



(Abstract). 



Sir Otto Jaffe, after thanking the Council of the Society for 

 electing him as their President, said his daily occupation did not 

 allow him to apply himself to any of the higher studies of science, 

 much less to research work, and he concluded that it would 

 perhaps interest them if in his inaugural address he dwelt on the 

 associations of Goethe and Schiller with the town of Weimar, 

 which he had the pleasure of visiting on his last holiday. The 

 streets which they now passed through in Weimar were not the 

 streets used by Goethe and Schiller in their daily walks during that 

 unique friendship, and there was very little romance about the 

 place. But Weimar was hallowed by the memory of the two 

 great friends who lived and worked there, and whose influence it 

 was even yet impossible to adequately estimate. Goethe was 

 born in 1749 in Frankfurt-on-Maine, and at an early age he 

 seriously occupied himself with lyric poetry and art studies. His 

 father had intended him for the profession of the law, but Goethe 

 was adverse to this, and he decided to devote himself whole- 

 heartedly to literature. With the appearance of " The Sorrows of 

 Werther " his reputation was made for ever. On attaining his 



