November 1775.
A travel car on the way from Frankfurt to Weimar.
The carriage was occupied only with two passengers.
We do not know which feelings one of the two moved a Weimarer court man.
He was sent out to accompany the other.
The feelings of the other can be reconstructed quite precisely.
He, the licenciate of the right, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, is filled with an enormous expectation.
The invitation of the Duke of Karl August follows, who wants to take him to the Weimarer court.
Goethe has the feeling of his own future, to face a new and decisive life.
But also to have to say goodbye to what was.
The perception of the future.
Memories of a life section that belongs to more of the past from mile to mile.
A bundle of experiences, insights, of despair and renunciation, the traveler takes from his previous life.
Faust's first encounter with Gretchen.
A series of the most important works that made Goethe world famous is already completed at this time.
Or, if not completed, but in essence conceived.
Clavigo, the suffering of the young Werther, some of his most beautiful poems, Stella, the Egmont and the Urfaust.
A piece in the language of storm and urge.
That literary direction that he founded with. A product of highly personal suffering and experiences.
There, that!
She came from her father, who freed her of all sin. I did not scream hard at the chair.
It is a very innocent thing, that nothing is to be done about it.
I have no power over it.
Is over 14 years old.
You speak like Hans Lüderlich.
He desires every flower for himself and thinks that it would be no good and he would not pick it.
Like his Faust, the young Goethe had feelings and feelings, a new name.
How he was shaken by passions, without that he could have bound himself to a girl of his choice.
Like Faust, Goethe asks for the meaning of the world.
Not just ready for a devil's union, but at least out of order to be able to satisfy with finished opinions.
I do not agree with that.
Frankfurt am Main, free capital.
Even at Goethe's age, 1000 years old.
The ship-able river, solid streets,
magnificent patrician houses, churches and monasteries.
Home of a educated and free-thinking citizen.
Through his fair, it was built into an important and rich trading place.
The German Emperor was elected in Frankfurt for centuries.
At the Great Hirschgraben in the summer of 1880,
the German Emperor was elected.
The German Emperor was elected in Frankfurt for centuries.
At the Great Hirschgraben in the summer of 1749,
at the house of the imperial council of Johann Caspar Goethe, there was a bright excitement.
On August 28, 1749, with the bell ringing 12, I came to the world in Frankfurt am Main.
The constellation was happy.
The sun was in the sign of the young woman.
Jupiter and Venus looked at her kindly.
Saturn and Mars behaved equally.
These good aspects may have been the cause of my survival.
Due to the impotence of the lift arm, I came to the world for death.
Only through many attempts did I see the light.
The little son Wolfgang grew up in a large urban environment.
The house at the Hirschgraben, a well-equipped section of the world,
where the child makes his first experiences.
Experiences, a wealth that you collect in the early years of life,
to later spend it as an adult.
This applies to all people, especially to poets and writers.
First of all, there are the parents.
The father, Johann Caspar Goethe, a sober, also a bit pedantic man.
Goethe later knows him as the life's leading serious.
From the mother, Katharina Elisabeth, born text or the desire to cabulate.
A lively, original, never boring person.
She is the special love of the son.
Cornelia is Goethe's first girlfriend and partner.
Finally, the neighbour's children.
The first public, where the little Goethe had his first spectacular appearance.
The kitchen.
It was just a pot market.
And the kitchen had been supplied with such goods for the next time.
At a nice afternoon, as everything was quiet in the house,
I drove my being with bowls and pots.
As I didn't want to find out anything else, I threw a bowl on the street
and was happy that it broke so fun.
The thing made an effect.
The players demanded donations.
Which artist can resist that?
And because those who were not satisfied at all,
everything that I could take away from the kitchen, I ruined it all.
The father is watching over the upbringing.
Goethe is taught in the style of the times by private teachers.
He learns old and new languages.
The ten-year-old reads Virgil, Robinson Crusoe, German fairies.
Above all, he reads Homer.
Also, the antiquity is always present to the growing up.
And the stiches that the father had in the stairwell,
may have awakened his Italian longing early on.
But the news that came from afar were only rarely good news at that time.
On November 1, 1755, the earthquake of Lisbon occurred
and spread an awful fear over the world already inhabited by peace and tranquility.
60,000 people were killed.
I was not affected by little.
God, the creator and keeper of heaven and earth, had not proved to be a father.
The world in which the young Goethe grew up was otherwise full of mistakes and tricks.
The prosperity of the cities did not prevail everywhere.
The social conditions on the land were often miserable enough.
The states of Europe were in trouble with each other.
The French Revolution was still far away.
1750, the French Revolution was still far away.
In the house of Goethe, a high officer was
inquired into the headquarters.
This burden was very heavy on the citizens and nobody could
be more troubled than the father, who would take in strangers in his house,
clean up his well-kept state rooms and what he was so well-organized and
managed to do, was a great responsibility.
The son benefited from the French occupation in his own way.
Until now he only knew the puppet show.
Through a friend he now had access to the performances of a theater group every day.
I was very happy to see the theater group.
A humble reverence greeted me.
To not miss the civility, I also gave the reverence on my part.
Suddenly he made me another reverence.
I also made another one in diligence.
Goethe learned the works of the French poets Racine and Molière in the original.
Soon, as a 13-year-old, he began to write his own verse.
The world, dear Agnès, is a strange thing.
See, the disdain is like every cause.
He passes, comes, passes again and always more beautiful,
makes me every time reverence and new.
And I, who was watching all these tours,
also gave him new reverence.
He learns to ride, dance and fight.
When he also brought it to some artistic level in these things,
he was now ready for life.
The fact that the son had a first love story
may have played a role.
Goethe learns a girl, Gretchen, with names,
in the circle of his friends.
It became the role model for Gretchen in the fist.
It was the first lasting impression that a female being had made on me.
And since I could not find or look for a preface to see her in the house,
I went to the church with love and soon felt where she was sitting.
The 16-year-old does not come out of the greeting and nodding.
Without contradiction, he climbs into the post carriage to Leipzig.
On October 3, 1765, he arrives there.
The fair and university city had in the past decades
the best ghosts of Germany.
Even Goethe did not miss their influence.
Leipzig is the first experience of the world for him.
The study of Joris Prodenz and the beautiful sciences,
however, disappointed the young students.
In none of the colleagues seems to be the real world to him.
Not even in the poet Gellert, who was a professor of morality in Leipzig.
Goethe decides to explore life on his own.
A path that will lead modern people to new discoveries.
He can be trained in the art of hiding and radiating.
He writes verses, determined by the spirit of the rococo.
And so began the direction from which I could not avoid my whole life.
Namely, the one who was happy or tormented or otherwise occupied,
in a picture, a poem to transform and to complete with myself.
A gift that should have a life-saving effect.
The young man has a tendency to extremes.
In extreme experiences, he also falls in love with Ketchen Schönkopf,
his first real passion.
When he sees her one day in the theater with a show guest,
he is extremely jealous.
He reports about it in a famous letter.
The emergency has solved his tongue.
From the student, he became a poet.
I found her lodge.
She sat at the corner.
Behind her chair, a gentleman in a very gentle position.
Ha, I remember.
In the gallery with a binoculars, watching this.
Curse!
I thought my head would explode with anger and my heart was dancing.
Suddenly the fever caught me with all its strength and I thought to die in that moment.
I did not go.
I ran out of the house.
Do you know an unhappy person with such wealth, with such views,
with such preferences as me?
Call me that and I will keep quiet.
At the end of his three-year Leipzig stay, Goethe enters a deep crisis.
He suffers a bloodstain and flies for days between death and life.
The frightened parents call him back to Frankfurt.
Goethe needs almost one and a half years to recover from his illness.
He is seriously ill.
He deals with religious people and, when he feels better,
for the first time in detail with natural scientific problems.
They will continue to occupy him for his life.
In 1770, Goethe can continue his studies in Strasbourg.
Now he finally feels a completely new sense of life.
Emotions, passions, desires and understanding
are measured on a scale at which everything is measured.
Goethe develops a new, richer self-understanding of the human being.
Already on the day of his arrival, the Münster.
The then barbaric, screaming Gothic style corresponds to his brilliant mood.
What an unexpected feeling surprised me when I entered the place.
A big impression fills my soul.
Because it consisted of a thousand harmonious details,
I could not explain how I enjoyed it.
How often have I returned?
I see the Münster from all sides, from all distances,
in every light of the day.
Goethe learns to work on himself.
He tries to endure the strong sound that was against him.
In anatomy, he tries to get used to the most repulsive views.
He practices on the Münster tower to become ready with the spindle, which he often falls into.
His friends also proclaim the rights and obligations of the individual.
If you want to be something, you have to be a guy.
He has to hit and stab, he has to tear zords and be able to make big words.
The realization that everyone is irreplaceable is ensured by over-exposure.
Because the human being is something, he has to prove himself as a genius.
A new era.
The title of a theater play will be transferred to it, Storm and Threat.
Goethe's new claim is also a claim to himself.
The things we look at, write in our memory, be attentive.
We don't have to be, but want to be everything.
In Strasbourg, Goethe learns about the five-year-old Johann Gottfried Herder.
Herder makes him known with the works of Shakespeare.
He promotes his view of folk poetry.
In Goethe's Lyric, a completely new tone is created.
My heart beat fast, like a horse.
It was almost done, thought.
The evening was already weighing the earth, and the night hung on the mountains.
A verse for Frédéric Guébrion.
In Sesenheim, Goethe had met her in a village near Strasbourg.
She was the daughter of a Protestant priest.
The student finds in Sesenheim a harmonious, balanced family.
Conversations, social games, reigning dances.
The happy experience of a new, not jealous, but sad love.
And yet...
The state of my heart is wonderful.
The most pleasant area, people who love me, a circle of friends.
I feel that you are not happier about any hair when you get what you wanted.
There is a lot of courage in the world not to become discouraged.
This time it is Goethe who is detached.
He fears the bond that could grow out of this love.
The answer of Frédéric's to a written farewell tore my heart.
I only felt the loss she suffered.
And I saw no way to replace her, only to leave.
She was very present to me.
I always felt that she was missing me.
Here I was guilty for the first time.
I had wounded the most beautiful heart in its deepest.
Back to Frankfurt, Goethe writes his first significant drama.
The story of the knight Goethe von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand.
I don't think anything bad. What about the boy?
It happened without his knowledge.
Why doesn't he give up?
He didn't do it the way he should.
Not the way he should. With my old man he did it the way he should.
So he is not caught with your and the bishop's knowledge.
Do you think I should go to the world where everything is out of order?
You are doing us wrong.
White ring, shall I run away from you?
I'll spit a thorn in your eyes.
So small I am.
Goethe stands at the top of the peasant who, to improve his misery,
has risen against the masters.
Goethe von Berlichingen embodies an ideal figure.
He is somewhat a symbol of genius,
who made the voice of his heart the cord of his action.
You are pulling me around,
blackmailing me with your majesty and your friends,
and spying on me with my neighbors,
trying to get me out of the way.
And you, white ring, are your tool.
Berlichingen!
Nothing more.
I am not a friend of explanations.
You cheat on yourself or the other,
and you know both.
Zutich, father!
Happy
and prosperous!
I hope my women should cheer you up.
You were a great help to me.
I'm sorry.
For I helped you to become hurtless.
The Reichskammergericht in Wetzlar,
the legal authority of the old German Empire.
In May 1772, Goethe meets in Wetzlar.
He is to work as a practitioner at this court.
It is known for his dragging processes.
They last years and decades.
The young lawyer has enough time to devote himself to the cozy life of the small town.
Soon after his arrival, he takes part in a rural ball.
He is asked to pick up a young girl, Charlotte Buff.
He meets her, a girl of beautiful shape, medium size,
how she cuts the bread for her siblings.
Lotte has lost her mother and leads the father of the house as the eldest.
Goethe is hardly that he danced the first dance with Lotte, as drawn.
Now it was about.
With what charm, with what fleetingness she moved.
I was no longer a human being.
To have the most loving creature in my arms
and to fly around with her like weather, everything went around.
He asks Lotte for a reunion.
She agreed with me.
And since then, the sun, moon and stars can run their business peacefully.
I don't know if it's day or night.
Who has learned to say the world, you learn to say.
Like never before in his life.
But Lotte is engaged to a lawyer.
Goethe gave him the name Albert in his novel Wierder.
After a few days Albert comes back from a trip.
Goethe goes into a despair without the same.
In September he leaves Wetzlar without saying goodbye.
He walks through the Lahn Valley.
On the way you can think, he is a little bit of a
wierder, but the first sentences are created for Wierder.
Oh, if only this wonderful nature was standing in front of me
like a painted picture.
And all the vines can't point out a drop of
bliss from my heart.
Relatively, like cut off, Goethe stands in front of the beauties of the world.
On marketplaces and castle grounds he feels like he is locked in.
I have often thrown myself on the ground and prayed to God for tears.
Like a man of the field, to the rain, when the sky is over him
and the earth is thirsty for him.
It is decided, Lotte.
I want to die.
And I sign you, without romantic over-stress, let go.
I want to die.
At noon he died, it is said, at the end of the Wierder.
One feared for Lotte's life.
Back to Frankfurt, Goethe first deals with other designs.
Only two years later it comes to the signature of the Wierder.
Goethe writes now as under a dictation.
I had isolated myself completely.
Yes, I forbade the visits of my friends.
Under such circumstances, after so long and many secret preparations,
I wrote the Wierder in four weeks,
without a scheme of the whole being brought to paper beforehand.
The suicide, an extremely unenviable protest action of the individual.
Writing saves Goethe's life.
Not rather, Wierder leaves the world, because it is not made according to his images.
The suffering of the young Wierder appears in print at the autumn fair in 1774.
The book finds a spectacular recording in the audience.
A process that is unique in German literary history.
At the same time, prints, prohibitions, counter-writings, apologisms and imitations follow.
Numerous translations still appear to Goethe's lifetime.
The last two years in Frankfurt.
Years full of insights and ideas.
Only a fraction of them were executed.
My productive talent has not left me an instant for some years.
What I was aware of on the day,
I would even often dream of at night.
The fist arises.
The Egmont, the drama of the liberation of the Netherlands from the yoke of Spain, is conceived.
Nevertheless, Goethe is restless and dissatisfied.
Nothing changes the engagement with Lily Schönemann,
the daughter of a well-wishful house.
The Goethe family welcomes his engagement.
The parents would have liked to see it if the young and now successful man had settled in Frankfurt.
But in a letter from that time it says...
If you can imagine a Goethe,
the galvanized skirt, otherwise from head to toe, also in
the middle of the wall lamp and crown lamp, is held by a few beautiful eyes at the table,
a Goethe who is driven from the society into the concert and from there to the ball
and with all the interest of the light-heartedness of a cute blonde who makes the court.
So they have the current Goethe almost at night.
A fortune that Karl August, a Thuringian heartthrob,
a man who is open to all things of art, invites Goethe to Weimar.
Goethe accepts the invitation.
I have to go. I would be a goal to be held.
This state is destroying all my powers. This state is robbing me of all courage.
It is tightening me. What could I not develop?
I have to go into the free world.
A flight from a rich, almost too rich past.
Clothes in luggage, countless ideas, also guilt feelings.
A flight into a new literary epoch.
I have to go. I would be a Goethe.
Thank you.