Goethes Harzreise im Winter

What Goethe may have reserved for future treatment, which the records of a later era can never offer in full originality, all this hints at a deeper exploration of the immediate testimonies of those days, namely the letters from Goethe to Frau von Stein that became accessible later and the contemporary diary entries. The small series of descriptions of the Harz journey, characteristic precursors to the magnificent letters from Switzerland, in which the poet's most secret thoughts and feelings pulse with the warmth of the present and the dominating, youthful, enthusiastic devotion to the moment, indeed provides insight into 'the general, inner, higher,' that which 'the poet envisioned,' into the driving forces of that phase of life.

This book about Goethe's Harz journey in winter, a literary study, is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition from 1904. The Verlag der Wissenschaften publishes historical literature by both well-known and lesser-known scientific authors. This makes works that have long been out of print accessible again to the interested reader.