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Mar 18, 2024 · Top Questions. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (born August 28, 1749, Frankfurt am Main [Germany]—died March 22, 1832, Weimar, Saxe-Weimar) German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, critic, and amateur artist, considered the greatest German literary figure of the modern era. Goethe is the only German literary ...
The original 1808 German title page of Goethe's play read simply: "Faust. / Eine Tragödie" ("Faust. / A Tragedy"). The addition of "erster Teil" (in English, "Part One") was retroactively applied by publishers when the sequel was published in 1832 with a title page which read: "Faust.
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Faust, two-part dramatic work by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Part I was published in 1808 and Part II in 1832, after the author’s death. The supreme work of Goethe’s later years, Faust is sometimes considered Germany’s greatest contribution to world literature. Learn more about the play.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The broad shape of the work's plot is largely based on what Goethe experienced during his time at Wetzlar with Charlotte Buff (1753–1828) and her fiancé, Johann Christian Kestner (1741–1800), as well as the suicide of the Goethe's friend Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem (1747–1772).
In 1773 Goethe provided the Sturm und Drang movement with its first major drama, Götz von Berlichingen, and in 1774 with its first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, an extraordinarily popular work in its time, in which he created the prototype of the Romantic hero.
Goethe began working on the drama during his student days in Strasbourg. In 1790 he published an incomplete version, known as Faust: Ein Fragment. In 1808, the complete version of the first part appeared. Goethe continued to work on the play, and Faust II was published posthumously in 1832.
In terms of influence, Goethe’s upon Germany is second only to Martin Luther’s. The periods of his dramatic and poetic writing – Sturm und Drang, romanticism, and classicism— simply are the history of the high-culture in Germany from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century.