Goethe: Vorbild oder Denkbild?

The renewed discussion surrounding a literary canon and well-founded goals of literary education, sparked by the 250th anniversary of Goethe's birth, serves as the starting point for this work. Using the example of the school reception of Goethe, the study examines both the changed cultural and educational policy guidelines and the school methods of conveying literary works. To this end, literary didactic discourses from around 1900 and current debates on the topic of 'Goethe in German lessons' are analyzed comparatively. This comparison reveals changes in the attribution of meaning, yet the powerful impact of Goethe's works remains, as it did in the past, the foundation of literature education today.