6 f&O' 
Missouri Botawcat; Garden 
George Engelmann Papers 
116 THE GOETHE HOUSE AT FRANKFORT 
lution has come, with the troublous times 
which followed it, and Goethe’s mother be- 
gins to find the large house a source of anx- 
iety and care. 
“ The handsome citizen’s house which my 
mother had enjoyed since my father’s death 
had been a burden to her ever since the 
beginning of hostilities, although she had 
not ventured to acknowledge it ; yet during 
my last year’s visit I had explained her situ- 
ation to her, and urged her to free herself 
from such a burden. But just at that time 
it was unadvisable to do what one felt to be 
necessary. A house newly built within our 
life-time, a convenient and becoming citi- 
zen’s residence, a well-cared for wine cellar, 
household articles of all kinds and in good 
taste for their time; collections of books, 
pictures, copper plates, maps, antiquities, 
small objects of art and curiosities; very 
many remarkable things which my father 
out of inclination and knowledge had col- 
lected about him as opportunity offered, — 
all was still there together ; it all, by place 
and position, was conveniently and usefully 
unitedy and only as a whole had it really its 
acquired worth. Thinking of it as divided 
and scattered, one must necessarily fear to 
see it wasted or lost.” 
This dispersion, which Goethe looked for- 
ward to with pain, took place in the next 
year, 1795. 
One enters the Goethe mansion from the 
street by three steps, and comes into a large 
hall extending the whole depth of the house 
from front to rear. On the right are rooms 
which were used for store-rooms and for the 
servants ; on the left are the kitchen, in the 
rear, and the family dining-room, toward the 
street. In the latter occurred the well- 
known tragi-comic barber scene. It was 
at the time when Klopstock’s “ Messiah” was 
in the height of its popularity. Rath Goethe 
had been educated in the opinion, very 
prevalent in his day, that poetry and rhyme 
were inseparable ; and as the “ Messiah ” was 
not written in rhyme, it was very plain to 
him that it could not be poetry, and he 
would have none of it. A friend of the 
family, at the same time an enthusiast for 
Klopstock, smuggled the book into the 
house. The mother and children were de- 
lighted with it, and the latter learned large 
portions of it by heart. Goethe relates : 
“We divided between us the wild, de- 
spairing dialogue between Satan and Ad- 
ramelech, who have been cast into the Red 
Sea. The first part, as the most violent, fell 
to my share ; the second, a little more pa- 
thetic, my sister undertook. The alternate 
curses, horrible indeed yet well sounding, 
thus flowed from our lips, and we seized 
every opportunity to greet each other with 
these infernal phrases. 
“ It was a Saturday evening in winter. 
My father always had himself shaved by 
.candle-light, in order to be able on Sunday 
morning to dress for church at his leisure. 
We sat on a footstool behind the stove, and 
while the barber put on the lather, mur- 
mured in moderately low tones our cus- 
tomary imprecations. But now Adramelech 
had to lay iron hands on Satan. My sister 
seized me violently, and recited softly enough, 
but with increasing passion : 
“‘Give me thine aid, I entreat thee; will wor- 
ship thee if thou requirest — 
Thee, thou monster abandoned; yes, thee, of 
all criminals blackest. 
Aid me; I suffer the tortures of death, which 
is vengeful, eternal. 
Once, in the time gone by, with a hot, fierce 
hate I could hate thee, 
Now I can hate thee no more. E’en this is 
the sharpest of tortures.’ 
“ Thus far everything had gone tolerably 
well ; but loudly, with a terrible voice, she 
shouted out the following words : 
‘“O, wie bin ich zermalmt! 
Oh, how am I crushed!’ 
“ The good barber was startled and upset 
the lather basin over my father’s breast. 
There was a great uproar, and a severe in- 
vestigation was held, especially in view of 
the mischief that might have resulted had 
the shaving been actually going forward. 
In order to remove from ourselves all suspi- 
cion of wantonness, we confessed to our Sa- 
tanic characters, and the misfortune occa- 
sioned by the hexameters was too apparent 
for them not to be anew condemned and 
banished.” 
The wide staircase begins in the large 
hall on the ground floor, and leads on each 
story to a spacious antechamber or hall, out 
of which all the rooms open. These ante- 
chambers on each floor, with large windows 
toward the garden or court, are frequently 
referred to by Goethe as having been the 
delight of .his childhood. In them the 
family passed much of their time during the 
warm season of the year, and the children 
found there ample space for play. On the 
second floor were the “best rooms.” We 
learn in an early chapter of “ Wilhelm Meis- 
ter’s Apprenticeship” that they had what 
was called English furniture, and wall-paper 
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