Goethe - His Life and Times [antikvár]

1 In Praise of Ancestry It was a difficult birth, continuing over a period of three days. Goethe entered the world almost lifeless, 'quite black' as his mother said later. This meant, in fact, blue, through respiratory deficiency and interruption of the circulation; asphyxia is the medical term. There was no doctor present, only a midwife, who is said to have been clumsy, and the grandmother, who stood behind the blue check curtains of the bed; these curtains could be drawn. The P child was shaken and rubbed under the heart with wine. 'Rätin, he is alive,' E cried the old woman as the infant opened his eyes, very large dark brown, Tt almost black eyes, as they were later described. ' In his memoirs, Dichtung und Wahrheit, the fact and fiction of his life, 1 ¦ Goethe sounds a more solemn note to record the date and hour of his birth: ' ' August 28, 1749. as the clock struck noon. He tells us the astrological con- ji' stellation of the planets, which was favourable: the sun in the sign of Virgo, culminating. Jupiter and Venus favourable. Mercury not adverse, all of ' which had, for him. its secret and direct bearing on the course of his life. The full moon exercised its influence and opposed the birth until his planetary hour had passed. A lying-in room in the eighteenth century, even in houses belonging to well-to-do middle-class families, was no very hygienic affair, quite apart from the absence of a doctor in this case. We must imagine the room as rather dark, with bull's-eye window-panes. The house was old; in fact, it consisted j of two houses joined together, with many stairs and many 'Gothic' irregularities. The child was laid in an old family crib, made of brown wood with inlaid decoration; he was tightly swaddled, according to the custom of the day. and was probably subjected to other procedures which would shock us now. Infant mortality was high then, in the Goethe family as well. The birth was a miracle, but the boy was sturdy and lived to a great age, like Voltaire, whose life was also despaired of at birth. A wet-nurse was called in. the mother did not nurse the child herself. At his christening the boy was given the names of his maternal grandfather, Johann Wolfgang Textor, who had just recently been made Schul-theiss, the head of the judiciary, and the highest permanent appointment in the town. During the ceremony the infant was held over an old family 2+ 13