Goethe at Christmas

As an indication of how little Christmas meant to Goethe, there is not a single mention of Goethe in the Christmas email of the Goethezeitportal. This is the major website for all kinds of information on Goethe and the era of Goethe, including texts, documentation, and so on. As always, there are lots of cool pictures (including the two posted here) and texts. Even Heinrich Heine, who was not a Christian (despite conversion), has an entry, describing Christmas in Berlin in 1822. Rüdiger Safranski in his book on the friendship between Goethe and Schiller, mentions one Christmas, in 1800, when Karoline Schlegel wrote to Goethe imploring him to invite Schelling for Christmas. It seems that Schelling (whom Karoline would later marry) was depressed. One glance from Goethe, she wrote, would transform him: "If I had a wish that I might dare to express, it is this, that you would lure him from his solitude at Christmas and invite him to be near you."

Goethe did, going so far as to send his own horses to Jena to pick up Schelling and bring him to Weimar on December 26. Schelling stayed until January 4 as a guest in Goethe's house am Frauenplan. Schiller joined them on New Year's Eve, when they engaged in "serious discussions," according to Safranski.

It's unclear to me whether Safranski is making a connection between events, but the next paragraph (p. 263) reports that, three days later, Goethe came down with erysipelas, a horrible bacterial infection, that nearly killed him: "he lost his sight, occasionally consciousness."

"Christtag früh"

As a young man Goethe did express some enthusiasm about Christmas, as can be seen in a letter to Johann Christian Kestner, written on Christmas day, 1772. He begins the letter vividly, locating himself in a specific time and place, up in his famous attic room:

Early Christmas day. It is still night, dear Kestner, and I have got up early in order to write again by the light of early morning, which recalls pleasant memories of earlier days; I had coffee made to honor the feast and plan to keep writing until morning breaks. The crier has already announced his song; I woke up on account of it. Praise to you, Jesus Christ. I love this time of year, the songs one sings; and the sudden cold makes me feel completely cheerful.

This was at the height of the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen phase, the so-called Sturm und Drang era, when Herder, Merck, and Goethe formed a literary circle. His letters are of a piece with the poetry and other literary writings. He sketches in this longish letter his changing mood as day dawns and reflects on his days with Lotte and Kestner. He mentions the previous evening:

We had a beautiful evening yesterday, like people on whom fortune has bestowed a great gift, and I fell asleep grateful to the holy ones in heaven for wanting o bless us with childlike joy for Christmas. When I walked through the market and saw the many lights and the toys I thought of you and my boys ...

Soon day arrives: "The first sign of day [das erste Grau!] has arrived above my neighbor's house, and the bells call together a Christian congregation." Yes, some enthusiasm on Goethe's part for Christmas, though it must be remembered that the protagonist of The Sorrows of Young Werther killed himself at Christmas time. Kestner of course was the fiance of Lotte Buff, the inspiration for Werther's love interest.

The pictures accompanying this post are totally unrelated to Goethe. They are from an old advertisement featuring a watercolor by the artist Charles E. Burchfield, an American artist with whom I have recently become acquainted via my friend, the artist Maureen Mullarkey. A good cheer to all at Christmas! I will be reading tomorrow, as every year, Charles Dickens' Christmas tales.

Goethe and the Rebirth of the Sun

Last year about this time I started looking for Christmas material to post on this blog, only to discover that Goethe wrote very little in the way of poetry about this Christian feast. In the meantime I came across a small book at the Goethe Institute here in Manhattan: "Christmas with Goethe" (Weihnachten mit Goethe). Anyone hoping to find Goethe expressing heartfelt joy at Christmas, however, will be sorely disappointed. The longest entries in an otherwise slender book (137 pages of large-print text in a 5x7 inch volume) are literary selections, from the Wilhelm Meister novels (e.g., "The Second Flight into Egypt"), or are vaguely anthropological ("Christmas in Naples," in Italian Journey).

Apparently Christmas did not go uncelebrated in Weimar. In a letter dated 20 December 1816, Marianne von Willemer informs August von Goethe that she has sent a package to Weimar that includes the kinds of sweets that Goethe père likes, including gingerbread cookies, as well as hams and sausages for August. Moreover, wrapped up with a pair of slippers for August is a "Christkindchen." I am not sure whether this is a figure for the Nativity manger, or whether it is another baked good in the shape of the infant Jesus. I think it must be the latter, because she writes that it is a gift for August and is an "allegorical allusion to their childhood." (She and August, who are about the same age, had got to know each other earlier in Frankfurt when he was visiting with his mother there.)

Marianne goes on: "You are, true, grown up now, but I am and remain small [i.e., a child]; and if the rest of the year I am large [i.e., an adult], every Christmas I become a child again." Goethe apparently liked the sweets that were profuse at Christmas, but not the sentiments that accompany the occasion. Still to be researched is whether Goethe wrote or said so little about Christmas because he disliked its Christian associations or because Christmas fell in the depths of winter. A clue is this report from Eckermann, dated Sunday, 21 December 1823:

Goethe's good mood was radiant again today. We have reached the shortest day, and the hope of seeing the days becoming significantly longer every week seems to exert the most favorable influence on his mood. "Today we are celebrating the rebirth of the sun!" he hailed me as I came in this morning. I hear that every year he spends the weeks before the shortest day in a depressed mood and goes around sighing.

As we approach the shortest day, the East Coast has become decked in snow. The snowfall began last evening.

I can't resist adding this rather weird image of the Flight into Egypt by Caravaggio. What would we do without Christian art!

Photo credit: McCutheon