Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Biography And Quotes

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe was born on August 28, 1749 in the Free Imperial City of Frankfurt or Frankfurt on main, Holy Roman Empire. He was a German, pictorial artist, writer, biologist, polymath, theoretical physicist, Natural Philosopher, Diplomat and civil Servant. His works include the fields of drama, poetry, prose, science, and philosophy. His parents were Johann Caspar Goethe and Catharina Elisabeth Goethe. Johann Wolfgang was given lessons in all the regular subjects of that time with focus on language, Greek, Latin, French, English, Italian, and Hebrew by private tutors and his father himself.

In the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century Goethe was one of the important figures in German literature and also of the movement of Weimer Classicism and Strum und Drang. His political viewpoint was that of a conservative. He considered the enthusiastic participation of students and professors in the French Revolution to be distortion of their force and was cynical about the governing ability of the masses. He also did not oppose the War of Liberation against Napoleon by the German states. He advocated the ruling and maintenance by benevolent despots of the small principalities in place of showing patriotic efforts to form unity among the various parts of Germany. He had also served as the Privy Councilor of the duchy of Saxe-Weimer for a long time.

Goethe was a very influential person across Europe and his works inspired fields like music, poetry, drama, and philosophy for the next century. Though he has wondered to take painting as his true vocation but his main contribution was his works on color, the Theory of Color. This and his other ideas on animal and plant morphology and homology were developed and extended by eminent naturalists of 19th century including Charles Darwin. His major works include Heidenroslein, Prometheus, Gotz von Berlichingen, Die Leiden des Jungen, Wethers, Der Konig in Thule, Stells, Der Erlkonig, Novella, Egmont, Die Zauberlehrling, Hermann und Dorotha, Faust, Zur Farbenlehre, Marienbad Elegy, Propylaen, etc. His other famous literary works include his numerous poems Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Goethe died on March 22, 1832 at the age of eighty two in Weimer, Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimer-Eisenach. He is measured as the utmost genius of modern German literature in line of Schiller.