Goethe's House [antikvár]

SOMÉ THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS EITHER BEFORE OR AFTER ONE'S VISÍT In this house were written large parts of "Faust", the two novels "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship", "Wilhelm Meister's Years oL Wandering" and "Kindred by Choice", the "West-Eastern Divan" and a wealth of other lvric, epic and dramatic works almost beyond calculation; the autobiographies "Poetry and Truth", "Italian Journey" and Campaign in Francé"; the "Theory of Colour", which runs into several volumes, essays on many scientific topics and writings on art. For this reason alone it is looked upon by mankind as a "casa santa". But it is not merely a "sanctuary" bearing the stamp of so much creativity of world importance. One does not only appreciate the value of recollection but one feels even today a direct and dynamic force emanating from the house and the objects within it. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, poet, statesman, politician, scholar and philosopher, lived here, with slight interruptions, for almost fifty years, from 1782 to 1832, surrounded by all kinds of remarkable equipment, household effects and large parts of his important collections. However, the thing which most impresses the observer is not the quantity of the objects but the connection they had with him and he with them. For even Goethe's living-quarters were "planned" and may therefore be regarded as a kind of mirror which holds for ever essential characteristics of the creative artist who was once active here and reveals them to the beholder - if he is willing to receive them. Goethe himself pointed to this close and intimate connection with the things surrounding him, when he claimed of the hundreds of objects displayed in this house that none of them were "collected out of whim or fancy" but "always with the intention and idea of systematically