Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born in Frankfurt in 1749 into a wealthy bourgeois family and studied law at his father's wish, though his heart was all in literature. At twenty-five The Sorrows of Young Werther made him famous overnight and the standard-bearer of the Sturm und Drang. The next year, at the invitation of the young Duke of Weimar, he came to Weimar and lived in that small town for more than fifty years as privy councillor and minister, in charge of mines, finances, roads and the theatre. At thirty-seven he slipped away without a word and travelled alone in Italy for nearly two years, returning to write poetry of classical calm and harmony. With his close friend Schiller he inaugurated the classical age of German literature. He also studied botany, anatomy and the theory of colours, a universal mind of a rare kind. He spent sixty years writing Faust and died a few months after finishing it.