Goethe und die Frauen

The Poet Prince and the Women – passionate love or eternal staging? For the Goethe anniversary: 275th birthday on August 28, 2024. Nature child or kindred spirit, naive beauty or highly educated intellectual – the women Goethe chooses for himself, like him, exist in a field of opposing tensions. But has he ever truly succeeded in loving anyone other than himself, in loving at all? Are not all women reflections of a dream image? From this perspective, Sophia Mott illuminates the role of the most important women in the life of the Poet Prince with both expertise and entertainment. Alongside Goethe's mother Katharina Elisabeth and his sister Cornelia, we also encounter: Kätchen Schönkopf, Friederike Brion, Charlotte Buff, Lili Schönemann, Charlotte von Stein, Christiane Vulpius, Marianne von Willemer, and Ulrike Levetzow. Why did you give us the deep looks, to foresee our future with apprehension, to our love, believing in our earthly happiness, never to trust in bliss again? Why did you, Fate, give us the feelings, to see into each other's hearts, only to spy on our true relationship through all the rare tumult? […] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "To Charlotte von Stein," April 14, 1776.