Goethe Trivia Quiz

Answer: Frankfurt am Main

From 1562 onwards the Holy Roman Emperors were crowned in Frankfurt. The city was and still is also a major trading and financial centre.

The young Goethe attended school for two years (1756-1758) but apart from that he was homeschooled by his father and private tutors. In addition, he attended classes in various 'gentlemanly accomplishments', such as dancing.

Answer: Law

Goethe found the study of law unsatisfying - dry-as-dust, with a lot of rote learning of what he often regarded as very silly laws. Later in life, he made some choice comments (through Mephistopheles in "Faust") about laws being handed down unthinkingly, 'like a disease', from generation to generation.

He practised law only briefly in order to earn a living.

A scene in "Faust" is set in Auerbachs Keller, a popular student drinking haunt which Goethe frequented in Leipzig. It still exists and is popular with tourists.

Answer: Storm and Stress

The German name for the movement is 'Sturm und Drang', which is also the title of a play that appeared in the 1770s. Both the German and English terms are catchy labels. It was a rebellious Pre-Romantic movement that emphasized emotion and rejected literary and to some extent also social convention. Among Goethe's best known works from this period is the drama "Götz von Berlichingen" (1773).

Answer: The Sorrows of Young Werther

The book (German title: 'Die Leiden des jungen Werthers') was first published in 1774. (When Goethe revised the novel in 1787 he dropped the final '-s' from the title, so both versions of the title are found). It was an instant success and was soon translated into many languages. It is often said that it was the first German work of literature to enjoy Europe-wide acclaim.

A veritable Werther cult came into being: young men started dressing like him, for example; but unfortunately the novel apparently also 'inspired' a number of suicides. There were cases of young people who said in suicide notes that they were acting like Werther and in at least one case the dead person was found near Goethe's house clutching a copy of the book.

Answer: Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach

Initially, he was invited to Weimar in 1775 as the guest of Duke Karl August but was asked to stay permanently and was appointed to the duke's council. At the time the town of Weimar had only 6,000 inhabitants but Goethe's presence played a key role in putting the town on the cultural map of the German-speaking lands and on that of Europe.

The standing of Weimar was also boosted by the arrival of Schiller in 1788 and Herder.

Answer: False

On the contrary, Goethe's mature oeuvre is regarded by Germanists as Classical, with its emphasis on form and harmony. (Notions that Goethe was the 'leading German Romantic' and the like are notorious blunders, widespread in the English-speaking countries, and presumably arise from the dates when he was active, and this howler seems to maintain a shadowy online existence in some English-language articles).

Goethe was in fact hostile to Romanticism and made a famous comment to the effect that 'Classicism is healthy and Romanticism sick' ('Klassisch ist das Gesunde, romantisch das Kranke' - literally, 'the healthy is Classical, the sick Romantic').

Answer: Conservative

Goethe was a moderate and, above all, cosmopolitan conservative. He was out of sympathy with the French Revolution, democracy and nationalism.

Unfriendly critics have sometimes drawn attention to the fact that he once said: 'I would rather commit an injustice than tolerate disorder'. ('Ich will lieber eine Ungerechtigkeit begehen, als Unordnung ertragen'). However, they omit the context. At the end of the siege of Mainz (1793) Goethe had a number of people arrested - possibly more than strictly necessary - because he thought they were about to lynch a man. Viewed in this context, the quote does NOT indicate contempt for justice.

Answer: Maria Stuart

"Maria Stuart" is by Friedrich Schiller. Goethe did not write any historical dramas after "Götz von Berlichingen" (1773). Arguably, Schiller had a keener sense of drama more generally.

Answer: An die Freude (Ode to Joy)

'An die Freude' ('Ode to Joy'), adopted as the EU anthem, is by Schiller, not Goethe. 'Erlkönig', 'Willkommen und Abschied', 'Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn ...?' along with many other poems by Goethe, have been set to music by Franz Schubert and many other composers. (Schiller's 'An die Freude' was set to music in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony).

Many phrases and lines from Goethe's poems and other works have passed into common German usage as clichés.

('Erlkönig' was translated into English by Walter Scott).

Answer: True

"Faust" I (1808) and II (1832) are, surely, Goethe's most famous works. Goethe's earliest version of "Faust" (often referred to as "Urfaust") dates from 1772-75 but was not published at the time. "Faust" acquired the nickname 'das Drama der Deutschen' ('the drama of the Germans'), and in World War II some said that Germany, like Faust, 'had made a pact with the Devil'.