Goethe the Manager

One of the books on Goethe that I am working my way through this summer is Goethe: Der Manager. The word “manager” is used advisedly by the author, Georg Schwedt, who seeks to portray Goethe’s practice, both literary and professional, within the context of modern management techniques. My own recent focus on Goethe concerns the early Weimar years. While this volume principally deals with the years after Goethe has become established in Weimar, it introduces a slew of people with whom he was associated from 1775 already, and with whom I am trying to gain a closer acquaintance

The aim of the book, as Schwedt mentions in the foreword, is to show how it was possible for Goethe so successfully to organize activities as diverse as administrative tasks and literary work (“so unterschiedliche und vielfältige Geschäfte wie das Verwalten (als Beamter) und Dichten (als freier Schriftsteller) erfolgreich zu organisieren”). Goethe, he asserts, can be taken as a model of our own managerial era. The first chapter, concerning Goethe before his arrival in Weimar, documents how his literary career (Sturm und Drang) and his legal work already established a “network.”

Here are the titles of the remaining chapters.

2. Der verbeamtete Manager
3. Der Zeitmanager
4. Der verbeamtete Entrepreneur: Veranstalter, Unternehmer, Agent und Förderer
5. Der Personal-Manager und Networker
6. Der private Geschäftsmann

There is a table of Goethe’s official activities and a short bibliography.

A lot of the material in this book has been treated in greater detail in various entries in the Goethe-Handbuch. For instance, Schwedt draws heavily on the entry of Siegfried Scheibe and Dorothea Kuhn on Goethe’s “Arbeitswese.” Nevertheless, it is great to have such scholarly articles condensed, as it were, plus there is lots of personal detail that gives a glimpse of Goethe or others in his environment. I mentioned in my last post the social emptiness of Weimar on Goethe’s arrival. In this connection, Nicholas Boyle in his Goethe bio goes on to write of Weimar in 1776: "There was no body of learned, or even systematically educated, men and women, no thinking and writing and artistically active milieu, such as a great city can provide, to support, stimulate, and give variety to their efforts." Schwedt shows us the contributions Goethe made to remedy the situation. In 1791,  for instance, he established the Freitagsgesellschaft (the Friday Society), which Schwedt calls a “think tank.”

At these monthly meetings, different individuals — scholars as well as members of the court and other intellectually interested people from Weimar and the neighboring towns — would present work on literary, historical, or scientific subjects. At the first meeting, according to Goethe’s minutes, Mining Director (Bergrat) Bucholz carried out a chemical experiment; Christian Gottlob Voigt read an essay concerning the newest discoveries on the west coast of North America; and Goethe read an introduction to his theory of light and color. The final contribution on that afternoon was from Major von Knebel: “Warum sich Minerva wohl eine Eule zugestellt habe?”

That last, by Knebel, is the one I would like to have heard.

By the way, Georg Schwedt is himself an analytical chemist by profession, with numerous scholarly publications to his credit, and apparently quite a time manager himself, to judge by the books on Goethe he has produced. Besides Goethe als Chemiker, these include a "Reiselexikon" of one hundred places associated with Goethe: Goethe: Museen, Orte, Reiserouten, a book that I have in my possession.  It was published in 1996 and thus, besides Germany, Switzerland, and France (Alsace), he was able to include places in the Czech Republic.

Picture credit: Das Lecturio Magazine

Goethe in July 1777

The "Goethe Room" at Schloss Kochberg

In July 1777 a month after receiving the news of Cornelia’s death, Goethe made a number of escapes from Weimar, some lasting only a day or two, including to Kochberg, estate of the von Stein family (who at the time were not in residence, but at a spa). As Nicholas Boyle writes, Goethe’s response that summer to his bereavement was “an almost manic wildness.” Sometimes he traveled alone, at times with members of the court.

On July 4, Goethe went to Dornburg with the Duke and Duchess Luise and Karl Theodor von Dalberg, where they sketched and, not having made overnight reservations, they ended up sleeping on straw palliates in unfurnished rooms of one of the small castles. Goethes diary entry: Nachts auf der Streue mit d. Herzog, Prinzen, Dalberg u 2 Einsiedels. The next morning they set off fireworks (Canonen gelöst), then returning to Weimar and arriving at midday. Goethe turned around and went to Kochberg (um 5 nach Kochberg geritten). He was back in Weimar on the 7th (In dunckler Unruhe früh). On the 8th he was in Tiefurt, joining the Duke and Prince Constantin where, as Boyle writes, they stayed up “half the night” and spent the following morning as well “talking, drinking, drawing silhouettes, and reading from his manuscript of Wilhelm Meister.” On the 11th he actually walked to Kochberg (Nachmitt. halb 5 zu Fus nach Kochberg kam halb 10 an). What oh what was going on in Goethe's head during those hours? The next day, July 12, was spent drawing.

Goethe seems to have been something like a member of the Stein family, spending a lot of time with Stein children, as on the visit he made on foot. He wrote to Charlotte concerning the July 12 visit (as always, go to Google Translate if necessary):

Mir ist's diese Woche in der Stadt wieder sehr wunderlich gegangen, ich habe mich gestern heraus geflüchtet, bin um half sechs zu Fuß von Weimar abmarschiert und war halbzehn hier, da alles schon verschlossen war und sich zum Bett gehn bereitete. Da ich rief, ward ich von der alten Dorothee zuerst erkannt und mit großem Geschrei von ihr und der Köchin bewillkommt. Kästner kam auch mit seinem Pfeifgen herab, und Karl, der den ganzen Tag behauptet hatte, ich würde kommen; Ernst, der schon im Hemde stand, zog sich wieder an, Fritz lag schon im Schlafe. Ich trank noch viel Selzerwasser, wir erzählten einander unsre Wochenfata, die Zeichnungen wurden produziert ...

The rest of his diary for July 1777 records frequent excursions to Kochberg, Tiefurt, and Ettersburg.

Boyle writes interestingly about the “ineluctable social facts” of Weimar at this time: “not much happened there, apart from the administration of the duchy.” The theater was one escape, a “transient” one into “aesthetic illusion, ... but Goethe was realist enough to know that inches behind the backcloth stood a blank wall.”

The lovely illustration at the top of this post is among a number of drawings of Kochberg by Editha Drawert (1887-1947) that can be found on the Goethezeitportal. According to the caption there, at the left is Charlotte's "old desk," which Goethe used when in Kochberg; the one of the right is the "new" one, a present to him from Charlotte.

Goethe in Fiction

I have posted occasionally on the results of my habit of looking for Goethe's name in the index of books I read, whatever the subject. He shows up everywhere. Just a couple of posts ago,  I introduced  the above subject, which I suspect is a promisingly large one.

There must be some kind of "law" to the effect that once you notice something, it will appear all over the place. Sure enough, this morning, while reading Willa Cather's The Professor's House, I came across a scene in which Goethe himself is the subject.

The protagonist of the novel, Godfrey St. Peter, a professor at a Midwestern collge, is in Chicago to give a lecture on his historical work. His son-in-law gives him and his wife tickets for a performance of Mignon at the city's opera house. St. Peter mentions that, when a student in Paris, he had a subscription to the Opéra Comique, where he occasionally saw Mignon. Cather is a wonderful writer, so allow me to introduce her description of the effect of the overture:

The music seemed extraordinarily fresh and genuine still. It might grow old-fashioned, he told himself, but never old, surely, while there was any youth left in men.

On the entrance of the hero, i.e., Wilhelm Meister, St. Peter's wife leans toward him and whispers:

"Am I over-credulous? He looks to me exactly like the pictures of Goethe in his youth."

To which her husband responds:

"So he does to me. He is certainly as tall as Goethe. I didn't know tenors were ever so tall. The Mignon seems young, too."

She was slender, at any rate, and very fragile beside the courtly Wilhelm.

What a lovely evocation of an era in America -- the novel appeared in 1925 -- when people actually had thoughts about what Goethe looked like.