Goethe and His Woman Friends;
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Y^^ ETHE AND HIS WOMAN FR.IENDS MARY CARGUNE CRAWFORD fyxmW Wimtx^xii plr«g loethe Collection THE GIFT OP A»^5,!L\VVS TETDUt ^ 2a "83 HPT I n ^1 4 1348J. MAY2 7l94^lf. NOV 1 8 1949 J DJEJL 8 19 6Z M '^ Cornell University Library PT 2081.C89 Goethe and his woman friends. 3 1924 026 176 804 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924026176804 GOETHE AND HIS WOMAN FRIENDS " Das Ewig-Weibliche Zieht uns hinan." — Goethe. " There is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed." — Caelyle. " Goethe's heart, which few knew, was as great as his intellect, which all knew." — Jung Stilleng. " Two souls, alas! reside within my breast. And each withdraws from, and repels its brother. One with tenacious organs holds in love And clinging lust the world in its embraces; The other strongly sweeps, this dust above, Into the high ancestral spaces." — Faust {Bayard Taylor's translation). CHAHLOTTE. \ ^-^{Y ' Frontispiece. See p. io8. ' GOETHE And His Woman Friends BY MARY CAROLINE CRAWFORD Author of " Old Boston Days and Ways," " Romantic Days in Old Boston," etc. ILLUSTRATED BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1911 1 Copyright, igii, By Little, Brown, and Company. All rights reserved Published, October, 191 Electrotyped and Printed by THE COLONIAL PRESS C. H. SiTnonds iH Co., Boston, U.S.A. FOREWORD Hardly any great man in all literary history has been abused with such malignity as Goethe. There is scarcely a crime in the category of which he has not been accused — and proved guilty, too, — by in- genious citations from his life or his works ! Remorse- less is among the gentlest adjectives hurled at his head by virtuous critics who are wont, then, to refer to the various women with whom his career is bound up as so many sucked oranges from which he had taken all the sweetness that was in them as he passed triumphantly upon his ruthless way. When, liowever, one searches for the fact-founda- tion of these Philippics one finds it to lie — in the poet's own words! His works, he declared, consti- tuted one great confession in which nothing was con- cealed and very little extenuated. But Goethe was a poet and so could scarcely have been expected to Boswellize his life; even the one volume we regard as autobiography confesses itself Dichtung as well as Wahrheit. It has, therefore, seemed to me worth whUe, in the following pages, to set forth the facts about Goethe and the women he knew rather than any- V FOREWORD body's (even his!) interpretation of the facts. Here was a man of such overflowing lovingness and such extraordinary personal magnetism that all who knew him surrendered to his charm. The world was certainly his oyster if he had but chosen so to regard it. He did not so choose. Even the period of youth- ful wild oats was a very short one with him. For, quite early, he came to feel that he meant something to the world; and, like every gifted man who governs his life in the consciousness of his worth, he had the appearance df being selfishly egoistic. He could not help loving but since he preferred to be passively hampered by a wounded heart rather than actively hampered by a superfluous wife he loved and rode' away. Goethe is the only exemplar the world possesses of a career devoted exclusively and con- sciously to self-development and for that reason we have no standard by which to judge his egoism. So, being baffled by it, we commonly call it by far worse names than it deserves. The self-indulgence of a young Faust we could understand but the self- restraint and self-flagellation of a Goethe who leaves his Frederica because he thinks renouncement of her necessary to his highest development is a character beyond the comprehension of most of- us and there- fore calls forth our abuse. The truth is, however, that Goethe, far from being vi FOREWORD a bad man, was an astonishingly good man, judged by the moral standards of his own time. In a Weimar whose atmosphere was stagnant with moral evil and of whose women Schiller declared, " there is not one of them but has had a liaison " the greatest crime which can be proved against him was that he made love on paper, for ten years, to a married lady seven years his senior. This is not the place to dwell on the part which Goethe's religious training played in his relations to this and other women but I am personally convinced that it was because Sin and Retribution were always real things to him (as well as because he was an egoist) that he kept himself as much as he did from what he believed to be wrong. He was, however, no " saint," but a very passionate man and again and again temptation beckoned to him often in forms which were madden- ingly subtle because, on the surface, so little sensual. The Second Part of Faust is, of course, Goethe's poetic rendering of these various episodes in his later life and I hereby acknowledge my indebtedness to Professor Marshall Livingston Perrin for help in the understanding of this greatest of his works. Thanks are also due, and are gladly rendered, to Herr von Bojanowski, Director of the Grand Ducal Li- brary at Weimar for the kindly cooperation through which there came into my hands, while there, much vii FOREWORD Goethe-material generally inaccessible; to my friend, Mrs. Emma D. Marean, who has helped me in the final proof-reading; to Dr. Wilhelm Bode, the eminent Goethe authority, for valuable suggestions and quotation privileges and to the many other kind people in Weimar who so generously assisted the stranger from overseas in the performance of her difficult task. My indebtedness to Goethe literature is, of course, enormous; for the most it has been acknowledged specifically in the body of the book. But I wish here to declare deep obligation to the numerous works of Heinrich Duntzer and to Bielschowsky's wonderful " Life " of Goethe. Thaiiks are, also, due to E. P. Button & Company for permission to use the para- graphs quoted from their London Library Edition of Lewes's " Goethe; " to the Houghton MifHin Com- pany for extracts given from "Goethe's Correspond- ence With A Child; " to Dodd, Mead and Com- pany for the passages cited from Alfred S. Gibbs' work on " Goethe's Mother " and to the Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Company for a translation which appeared in George Calvert's voltmie " Charlotte von Stein." For the most part, however, the trans- lations used are, unless otherwise indicated, my own. M. C. C. Boston, Massachusetts, 191 i. viji CONTENTS CHAPTEB FAGB FOKEWOHD V I. Boyhood Days in Frankfort ... 1 II. Goethe's Sister Cornelia ... 18 III. His Leipzig Sweetheart .... 33 IV. The Friend with the Beautiful Soul . 51 V. Goethe and His Beatrice ... 73 VI. Charlotte, Who Cut Bread and Butter 108 VII. LiLi 136 VIII. Charlotte von Stein . .167 IX. Frau Aja 214 X. In Italy with Angelica Kauffman . 256 XI. Christiane 295 XII. Goethe's Two Duchesses .... 320 XIII. Bettina 350 XIV. Minna Herzlieb 376 XV. Marianne von Willemer .... 392 XVI. The Poet's Last Love . .416 XVII. Weimar, the City of Goethe . 429 Index 449 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAOB Charlotte Frontispiece ' The Puppet Theatke . 6 Goethe's Father and Mother 7 Goethe House at Frankfort lo Jewish Quarter at Frankfort ii Goethe, from the portrait by May 26 CoRNEUA Goethe 26 Two views of the Garden at the Frankfort house to-day 27 Inn where Goethe lodged in Leipzig 34 Goethe and the Silhouette 34 Katharine Schonkopf 35 Frederika Oeser 35 Auerbach's Keller, Leipzig 42 Charlotte, her husband and their children .... 43 Fraulein von Klettenberg S4 eckermann ss Strassburg Cathedral 72 View from Strassburg Cathedral 73 Frederika's home IN Sesenhedi 82 Goethe and Frederika 83 Goethe, from the portrait bt Rabe 88 Frederika awaiting Goethe 89 Charlotte cutting bread and butter no xi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE WeRTHER and LOTTE Ill Goethe Skating at Frankfort 130 Maximiuane La Roche Brentano 131 Goethe and Lili 148 Kaio. August 149 Corona Scbroter 149 Schiller at the Court or Weimar 176 Duchess Louise 177 Charlotte von Stein 186 • Portion or the castle at Kochberg, prom a drawing by Goethe 186 Goethe's Garden-House at Weimar 187 Goethe acting before the Court of Weimar .... 190 Royal ladies in the garden at Weimar 191 Charlotte von Stein's home in Weimar 210 Goethe's house in the Goethe -Platz 211 Frau Aja 248 Ross Markt, Frankfort, showing the later home of Goethe's mother 249 Goethe outside Rome, after the painting by Tischbein . 260 '^\\- H^r' Angelica Kauffman, from the portrait by herself . 260 Christiane, from Goethe's drawing 261 Angelica Kauffman, from the portrait by Reynolds . 261 Goethe, from a portrait by Angelica Kauffman . 268 Emma Hamilton, by Romney 269 Maddalena Riggi, from a drawing by Goethe . .272 Barbara Schulthess 272 Christians Vulpius, from a drawing by Goethe . .273 Goethe and his son, from a painting by Hans M. Schmidt . 302 xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FAOB Garden of Goethe's town house in Weimar .... 303 Duchess Anna Amalia 324 Tiefurt 325 Belvedere to-day 330 Ettersburg to-day 331 Karl August 336 The evening circle at Anna Amalia's 337 Madame de Stael 364 The Child Bettina 365 Bettina von Aknim 365 Minna Herzueb 380 Ottilie von Goethe 380 August von Goethe 381 Marianne von Willemer 394 Christiane Neumann 394 Christiane Vulpius 394 Goethe, from the painting by Heinrich Kolbe .