Goethe's diaries

I have been tweeting from Goethe's diaries for the year 1776. Interesting, that this is the year that the United States had its birth, on July 4, with the Declaration of Independence. Goethe's diary shows no awareness of this event, nor do his letters. He had barely been six months in Weimar on that date. I have the Metzler edition of the diaries for the years 1775 until 1787, along with the commentary volume, which offers information concerning people and places that Goethe reduced to abbreviations. For instance, in my last Tweet is the abbreviation "Eins," which represents Friederich Hildebrand von Einsiedel, one of Carl August's close associates (along with Wedel, who is also mentioned in that Tweet). There was what might be called a "Männerkreis" around the young duke, of which Goethe quickly became an integral member.

Einsiedel seems to have been an aesthete: a "Schöngeist." He played the violincello in the Liebhaberorchester, and took on many roles in the Liebhabertheater. He played the role of Söller in Goethe's play Die Mitschuldigen, which had its premier at the Liebhabertheater in Weimar in January 1777. The play opens with Söller breaking into the room of one of the guests at an inn. He is dressed as a "Domino" (he has told his father-in-law, the owner of the inn, that he was going to attend a masked ball).

According to the entry on Einsiedel in Effi Biedrzynski's Goethes Weimar, Einsiedel had a somewhat labile personality, which is suggested in Goethe's correspondence's with him about his part in the play. In mid-November he wrote to Einsiedel as follows:

Du mußt in einer verfluchteten Hypochondrie stecken. Ich wollte schwören, dir wärs gut, wenn du dich nur ein bissel angriffst. ... Die Andern spielen brav und ich weis absolut keinen Söller. Und weis, daß du ihn gewiss gut spielen würdest.

Toward the end of November, he wrote him again about his concerns:

Einsiedel, ich bitte dich, strecke deinen Stumpfsinn an die Rolle! Die Andern machen's brav ...

In investigating such individuals, one gets some insight into what Goethe's life was like in these early Weimar years, in which he underwent an immense transformation, personally and poetically. I try to imagine how he "managed" such aristocrats, people who could be genial, but also rather hidebound, like the society described by Proust in Swann's Way.

Picture credit: Berlin Programm