There are many reasons for traveling: vacation, business, health cures, pilgrimages, family visits and, of course, birthdays. And one such reason for traveling, at least for some, is today, August 28, 2024: Goethe's 275th birthday (born in 1749).
It is celebrated in several places: In Frankfurt, a party with music, readings and small talk is held in the poet's birthplace. There are also celebrations in Weimar, his long-term residence in what is now Thuringia, and of course in the Casa di Goethe in Rome, the main destination of his trip to Italy from September 1786 to May 1788.
Two years in Italy with job guarantee
The house in Via del Corso where Goethe lived during his stay in Rome is now a museum. There, too, the “compleanno di Goethe” is duly celebrated with a reading from “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, published 250 years ago, and of course with a few glasses of Prosecco.
Many people still envy Goethe for his trip to Italy today: traveling all over Italy on a cultural holiday from September 1786, before that taking a cure in Carlsbad, so being away for almost two years, and all this with ongoing pay and a job guarantee from his boss, the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, now that would be something!
Unfortunately, the railway did not arrive in Rome until about 90 years later, when the journey would have been somewhat more convenient.
There is also a big party in Weimar, which starts at 12 noon (the hour of birth) and offers lots of music, lectures and workshops throughout the city.
The young superstar
The most traditional place for the celebrations, however, is Frankfurt, the poet's birthplace. For once, the focus is not on the banks and insurance companies with their ostentatious towers, but on the Goethe House on the Grosser Hirschgraben, which has been rebuilt to its original state and is well worth seeing, with many pieces of furniture that survived the war well thanks to careful, protected storage.
Today at 19 p.m., the Goethe community from Germany and half of Europe will meet in the beautiful half-timbered house, listen to works by Mozart, Schubert and Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and be guided through the current exhibition in the adjacent Romantic Museum to mark the 250th anniversary of the publication of "The Sorrows of Young Werther." The work made the young Goethe a European superstar in his day. Landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich will also be remembered; he would be a proud 250 years old today. Goethe once supported him, but later spoke disparagingly of his works.
The house and garden are lit by candles as they once were, and the sounds of the harp transport the elegantly dressed guests, mostly of a more mature age, back to a bygone era. People meet, chat, drink Rhine wine, cheer the old man and forget that not everything is going so smoothly in the world outside. The event is open by invitation only.
How did Goethe celebrate in 1824?
Two hundred years ago, Goethe himself had absolutely no desire to celebrate. The extremely embarrassing marriage proposal of the then seventy-four-year-old widower to the nineteen-year-old Ulrike von Levetzow a year earlier in Marienbad still caused people to shake their heads. Back home in Weimar, his son August's marriage to Ottilie (both lived with their father) was not going well, and word got around all over Weimar. Goethe probably also realized that his time would be very limited. He threw himself into working on his works and was interested in the railway construction that was just beginning, probably not realizing what an enormous revolution in mobility was about to take place.
Also a reason to travel
A trip to celebrate a 275th birthday. The whole thing sounds a bit bizarre, especially for people who don't necessarily have a close relationship with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. That may be true, but apart from the writer's cultural significance, there is a certain economic impulse behind it, as with other events. Of course, it can't be compared with trade fairs or congresses, but at least the birthdays of probably the most famous Frankfurter have been celebrated for decades with thousands of guests and events at several locations in and around the city. A small selection: Goethe's role as a botanist is highlighted in the Palmengarten, chamber music and readings are given in the Willemerhäuschen, restaurants offer special "birthday menus", etc.
The Goethe Museum in the Jägerhof Castle in Düsseldorf is also hosting a garden party. Goethe was never there, but that doesn't matter, the castle houses the largest private Goethe collection in the world.
Who knows, maybe today on the ICE or on the planes to Frankfurt, in addition to the usual business travelers or transfer passengers, there will also be a few literature freaks who, instead of looking at their laptops, will read a work by Goethe and will not only change planes in Frankfurt, but will stay there.
This post was written by: Mag. Wolfgang Ludwig.
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