Goethes Mutter

She was the daughter of the city mayor Johann Wolfgang Textor, the highest judicial authority and most powerful man of the Free Imperial City of Frankfurt, who married the only seventeen-year-old Catharina Elisabeth to the jurist and Imperial Councilor Johann Caspar Goethe, a wealthy private citizen more than twice her age. He also owned the house on Hirschgraben where Johann Wolfgang Goethe was born, tenderly referred to by his mother as "Wölfchen," "Wolf," "my dear son." Catharina Elisabeth, affectionately called "Frau Aja" by friends, never lacked in tenderness. Even the household accounts, which recorded the wages of the cook, laundress, and wigmaker, as well as expenses for cooking soap and candied sugar, noted her care amidst the dry figures. The son received silver shoe buckles and embroidered vests, bottles of their own wine, homemade "biscuits," and plenty of money for travel. Goethe noted in "Dichtung und Wahrheit" that he inherited eloquence and the art of expression from his mother. As for the resemblance, Goethe's mother explained, "I do not hide my light under a bushel, but put it on a candlestick." Admired by her son for her independence, Catharina Elisabeth Goethe led an independent and self-determined life. She founded a literary circle, had books sent from the lending library, and played the piano passionately, sometimes so vigorously that it could be heard all the way to the main guardhouse. After her husband's death in 1782, she began a new life at the age of fifty, which was highly unusual for a woman at that time. A friend introduced her to the actor Karl Ferdinand Unzelmann, who later celebrated triumphs in Berlin, with whom she spent "the happiest time" of her life, as she confessed after their separation. It was bitter for her that her famous son visited her less and less frequently. Yet, despite some disappointments, she retained her cheerfulness.