What Goethe Saw

Sometimes it is necessary to lift your eyes from the written words and try to see what Goethe saw. Goethe has been characterized as an "Augenmensch." As Richie Robertson has written: "The German language distinguishes Augenmenschen (eye-people) and Ohrenmenschen (ear-people). Although Goethe appreciated music, and was a competent pianist, he was emphatically an Augenmensch. He was also from an early age familiar with painters."

So it was that, as I was rereading Book 14 of Goethe's autobiography, I checked out a couple of the places he mentions visiting on his travels in the summer of 1774. It was a lively summer for him. Although his legal studies were behind him and he was now "Doktor Goethe" and occupied with legal work with his father, he made a Rhine-Lahn journey with Lavater and Basedow and also made the acquaintance that summer with Friedrich Jacobi. Lavater and Jacobi in particular were important influences on him

The illustration at the top of the post is of Bad Ems, which is currently "one of the most popular spas in Europe" (so Google) and was also quite popular in Goethe's time. I tried to find an image that showed it as it might have looked before trains drew people there. The other three images here include a painting of the Jabach family, a contemporary image of Bensberg Castle as Goethe might have approached it, and a painting by Jan Weenix of which Goethe wrote very enthusiastically in Book 14.

What Goethe saw in Cologne was the actual Jabach family house, as it was ca. 1695, which Charles Lebrun had painted ca. 1661 (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art). As Goethe wrote: "Man führte mich in Jabachs Wohnung, wo mir das, was ich sonst nur innerlich zu bilden pflegte, wirklich und sinnlich entgegentrat. Diese Familie mochte längst ausgestorben sein, aber in dem Untergeschoß ... fanden wir nichts verändert." (I was led into the Jabach home, where I was confronted with the real and the sensuous, things that formerly I had only imagined. This family may have long since died out, but we found nothing changed in the lower floor.) More details on this visit to Cologne and on Jabach can be found in an earlier post of mine.

It was in Bensberg Castle that Goethe saw and praised the skill of the painter Jan Weenix, who made a reputation with scenes of animals "after the hunt." Goethe was impressed by the talent by which Weenix was able "jene entlebten Geschopfe zu beleben ..." (to revivify those dead creatures).