Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was a German poet, novelist, dramatist and natural scientist, born in Frankfurt, who became famous across Europe at twenty-four with The Sorrows of Young Werther and spent the rest of his life at the court of Weimar as minister, theater director and presiding genius of German letters. His journey to Italy in 1786 produced the Roman Elegies and a turn toward classicism; his later works include the novels Wilhelm Meister and Elective Affinities, a theory of colors and the two parts of Faust, the second completed in the last year of his life. He is to German literature what Shakespeare is to English.