Winter in Weimar 1777

I was reviewing some of my recent Goethe Tweets and noticed something interesting.

Goethe was supervising the work on his Gartenhaus on this day in 1777. The roof seemed to have some problems, and, as he wrote in his diary for this day, he was "den ganzen Tag unter den Arbeitern." What might the weather have been in Weimar at the end of March of that year? Maybe not too bad -- just as it is pretty warm this day of 2020 in New York City, with cherry blossoms and forsythia already in bloom in Central Park and people wearing shorts and on bikes -- but if I return to an earlier Tweet, that of January 3, I see that Goethe, besides dictating the first act of Lila, spent the entire day "Im Garten." Did he have a nice warm winter coat?

Entrance to Central Park, March 27

The person to whom he dictated Lila was presumably Philipp Seidel, who had accompanied Goethe from Frankfurt and who, until Christiana moved into the Gartenhaus in 1788, organized most of Goethe's private activities. The relationship between him and Goethe was so close that Philipp was the only person who knew in advance of Goethe's plan to travel to Italy.

Goethe utilized the talents of various scribes, and there have been illustrations of Goethe dictating in later years. In fact, I did a post on Goethe and his scribes back in 2015, and the image I used showed Goethe and the scribe in full-length coats. The picture of Goethe's work space in the garden house at the top of the post suggests a cozy little room, but it must have been pretty cold there at the beginning of January 1777.

Image credit: Klassik Stiftung Weimar