THE GOETHE HOUSE AT FRANKFORT 
leave them all incomplete. This trait must 
have been a severe trial to the father, for 
his rule was, that everything begun should 
be completed, and if a book which he 
had chosen to be read aloud in the family 
circle proved never so tedious, it must be 
read through, even if he were himself the 
first to set the example of yawning. In. 
spite of the many-sidedness of Goethe’s 
mind, there was little place there for mathe- 
matics, — a line of thought which was not very 
far pursued in his education, and which he 
never could appreciate. Later in life, when 
mathematicians offered to prove by geomet- 
ric formulae that his theory of colors was 
false, he could not comprehend them, and 
believed that they were trifling with him. 
He approached the problems of nature, not 
as an unimpassioned investigator, but as a 
poet, and the wonderful generalizations 
which he made in botany and anatomy, — 
theories which are now accepted and ac- 
knowledged, — sprang from his intense po- 
etic conception of the necessary unity of 
nature. 
Not a ray of the poet’s genius , can be 
traced to his father ; in the son’s youth and 
young manhood the joyous disposition and 
lively imagination which he received from 
his mother were his most conspicuous quali- 
ties ; but as he grew old, he came more and 
more to resemble his father, and in the dig- 
nified formality of what was called Goethe’s 
“ official manner,” the old Frankfort Coun- 
cilor seems to appear again before us. 
The rebuilding of the house was one of 
the great events of Goethe’s childhood. The 
family remained in it through nearly the 
whole period of the work. The upper stories 
were supported, and the house rebuilt from 
below upward. Goethe writes : 
“ This new epoch was a very surprising 
and remarkable one for the children. To 
see falling before the mason’s pick and the 
carpenter’s axe the rooms in which they had 
been so often cooped up and pestered with 
wearisome lessons and tasks, the passages 
in which they had played, the walls for 
whose cleanliness and preservation so much 
care had been taken, to see this work going 
on from below upward while they were sus- 
pended, as it were, in the air, propped up on 
beams, and yet all the time to be held to an 
appointed lesson, to a definite task — all this 
brought a confusion into our young heads 
which it was not so easy to clear away again. 
But the inconveniences were felt less by the 
young people because they had more space 
for play than before, and had many oppor- 
tunities of balancing on rafters and playing 
at see-saw with the boards.” 
The rebuilding was begun in the spring 
of 1755, and was at least so far completed 
before the winter that the family could re- 
sume their usual course of life. Much re- 
mained to be done for the adornment and 
completion of the interior. The father’s 
books were re-arranged, and the pictures, 
which had been scattered through the house, 
were collected together, set in black and gilt 
frames, and hung in one room in symmet- 
rical order. With the Herr Rath’s intense 
love of order and minute attention to details, 
all these arrangements, together with the 
decorating and furnishing of the rooms, were 
extended over a long period of time. In 
the course of this work so much that was 
superfluous was found, that the Herr Rath 
(who never allowed anything to be lost) de- 
termined to have a sale by auction, at which, 
among other things, he sold his mother’s 
clothes and house-linen. The following 
advertisement appeared in the “ Frankfort 
Advertiser,” April 25th, 1758: 
“By superior authority, on the coming 
Monday, May 1st, and the following days, 
at the house of Rath Goethe, in the Grosse 
Hirschgraben, will be sold, by the sworn 
auctioneer, to the highest bidder, various 
movables in the following order : First, sev- 
eral fire-arms, among them a new mousqueton; 
next, various articles of wood-work, together 
with a still serviceable lattice* for a house- 
door, three large house- clocks ; then, tin and 
brass articles, etc. Further, several empty 
casks ; next, a violin and an ebony flute trav- 
ersiere ; further, a number of law, practical 
and historical books, and among these a set 
of the well-known * Elzevir Republics,’ to- 
gether with about one hundred and eighty- 
two unbound complete copies of D. Wahl’s 
‘ Dissert, de usufr. conjugum pacitio ;’ fur- 
ther, several silk and cotton dresses; and 
lastly, a moderate assortment of good linen 
articles, mostly for women, as well as vari- 
ous articles not included under the above 
heads.” 
Turning to the year 1794, in Goethe’s 
diary we find a pleasant retrospect of the 
reconstructed, refurnished home. Nearly 
forty years have passed away since all were 
so busy with its refurnishing. The Herr 
Rath is long since dead ; the French Revo- 
* The Gerdms through whieh the mischievous 
Wolfgang threw all the kitchen dishes . for the 
amusement of his playmates, the Ochsensteins, 
across the way. See the Autobiography. 
