Goethe’s Friends in Gotha and Weimar

»And now I bid all my friends in Weimar and Gotha a faithful farewell! Your love accompanies me, as I could not continue without it…«

 Against a backdrop of wars and confusion, agreements and conflict between the neighboring courts of Gotha and Weimar, this book – based, as always, on Sigrid Damm’s meticulous research – reveals a largely unknown chapter of Goethe’s biography and freshens it up with exciting new color.

Both often and happily did he find himself in Gotha, his stays there forever tied up with the richest memories of a long life, the 78-year-old Goethe would recall. As a young man while in Italy he had even offered his services to the Duke of Gotha. Nevertheless, Weimar would remain Goethe’s home for more than fifty years and be the town to which, thanks to him, the term »Weimar Classicism« will always be connected. And yet, could it not just as easily have been Gotha? This question provides the point of departure of Sigrid Damm’s latest work. The book covers the years from the 19-year-old’s first stay at the Friedenstein Castle through the intense time of his friendship with Gotha’s ruler and his brothers all the way up to the elderly poet for whom visits to and news from Gotha were always welcome. We see Goethe as a welcome guest and much sought after conversationalist in Gotha, as a poet both privately and in his capacity as a diplomat, and we learn of the many reasons for his presence there between 1776 and 1801, as well as the reasons for his later distance.