Coordinates	44°25′57″N26°6′14″N
Name	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Birth date	August 28, 1749
Birth place	Free Imperial City of Frankfurt, Holy Roman Empire
Death date	March 22, 1832
Death place	Weimar, Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
Occupation	Poet, Novelist, Playwright, Natural Philosopher, Diplomat, Civil servant
Nationality	German
Movement	Sturm und Drang; Weimar Classicism
Notableworks	''Faust''; ''The Sorrows of Young Werther''; ''Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship''; ''Elective Affinities''; "Prometheus"; ''Zur Farbenlehre''; ''Italienische Reise''; ''Westöstlicher Diwan''
Spouse	Christiane Vulpius
Influences	Calderón de la Barca, Gellert, Hafez, Herder, Homer, Klopstock, Lessing, James Macpherson, Rousseau, Schiller, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Swedenborg, Winckelmann
Influenced	Iqbal, Lamarck, Darwin, Hegel, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Carlyle, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Machado de Assis, Nikola Tesla, Turgenev, Steiner, Mann, Hesse, André Gide, Cassirer, Jung, Freud, Spengler, Wittgenstein, Grass, Ikeda, Grigol Robakidze, Thomas Pynchon, Prešeren
Signature	Goethe Signature.svg }}

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (, 28 August 1749 22 March 1832) was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His ''Faust'' has been called the greatest long poem of modern European literature. His other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman ''Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship'', and the epistolary novel ''The Sorrows of Young Werther''.

Goethe was one of the key figures of German literature and the movement of Weimar Classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; this movement coincides with Enlightenment, Sentimentalism (''Empfindsamkeit''), ''Sturm und Drang'' and Romanticism. The author of the scientific text ''Theory of Colours'', his influential ideas on plant and animal morphology and homology were extended and developed by 19th century naturalists including Charles Darwin. He also served at length as the Privy Councilor of the duchy of Saxe-Weimar.

In politics Goethe was conservative. At the time of the French Revolution, he thought the enthusiasm of the students and professors to be a perversion of their energy and remained skeptical of the ability of the masses to govern. Likewise, he "did not oppose the War of Liberation waged by the German states against Napoleon, but remained aloof from the patriotic efforts to unite the various parts of Germany into one nation; he advocated instead the maintenance of small principalities ruled by benevolent despots."

Goethe's influence spread across Europe, and for the next century his works were a major source of inspiration in music, drama, poetry and philosophy. Early in his career, however, he wondered whether painting might be his true vocation; late in his life, he expressed the expectation that he would ultimately be remembered above all for his work on colour.

Early life

Goethe's father, Johann Caspar Goethe (Frankfurt am Main, Hessen, 29 July 1710 Frankfurt, 25 May 1782), lived with his family in a large house in Frankfurt, then an Imperial Free City of the Holy Roman Empire. Though he had studied law in Leipzig and had been appointed Imperial Councillor, he was not involved in the city's official affairs. 38-year-old Johann Caspar married Goethe's mother, Catharina Elisabeth Goethe, the daughter of the Schultheiß (mayor) of Frankfurt Johann Wolfgang Textor (Frankfurt, 11 December 1693 Frankfurt, 6 February 1771) and wife Anna Margaretha Lindheimer (Wetzlar, 23 July 1711 Frankfurt, 18 April 1783, a descendant of Lucas Cranach the Elder and Henry III, Landgrave of Hesse-Marburg; married at Wetzlar, 2 February 1726), when she was 17 at Frankfurt on 20 August 1748. All their children, except for Goethe and his sister, Cornelia Friederike Christiana, who was born in 1750, died at early ages.

The father and private tutors gave Goethe lessons in all the common subjects of their time, especially languages (Latin, Greek, French, Italian, English and Hebrew). Goethe also received lessons in dancing, riding and fencing. Johann Caspar, feeling frustrated in his own ambitions, was determined that his children should have all those advantages that he had not.

Goethe had a persistent dislike of the Roman Catholic Church, characterizing its history as a "hotchpotch of fallacy and violence" (''Mischmasch von Irrtum und Gewalt''). His great passion was drawing. Goethe quickly became interested in literature; Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Homer were among his early favourites. He had a lively devotion to theatre as well and was greatly fascinated by puppet shows that were annually arranged in his home; a familiar theme in ''Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship''.

He also took great pleasure in reading from the great works about history and religion. He writes about this period:

Goethe became acquainted to Frankfurt actors. Around early literary attempts, he was infatuated with ''Gretchen'', who would later reappear in his ''Faust'' and the adventures with whom he would concisely describe in ''Dichtung und Wahrheit''. He adored Charitas Meixner (July 27, 1750 - December 31, 1773), a wealthy Worms trader's daughter and friend of his sister, who would later marry the merchant G. F. Schuler.

Legal career

Goethe studied law in Leipzig from 1765 to 1768. He detested learning age-old judicial rules by heart, preferring instead to attend the poetry lessons of Christian Fürchtegott Gellert. In Leipzig, Goethe fell in love with Käthchen Schönkopf and wrote cheerful verses about her in the Rococo genre. In 1770, he anonymously released ''Annette'', his first collection of poems. His uncritical admiration for many contemporary poets vanished as he became interested in Lessing and Wieland. Already at this time, Goethe wrote a good deal, but he threw away nearly all of these works, except for the comedy ''Die Mitschuldigen''. The restaurant Auerbachs Keller and its legend of Faust's 1525 barrel ride impressed him so much that Auerbachs Keller became the only real place in his closet drama ''Faust Part One''. Because his studies did not progress, Goethe was forced to return to Frankfurt at the close of August 1768.

In Frankfurt, Goethe became severely ill. During the year and a half that followed, because of several relapses, the relationship with his father worsened. During convalescence, Goethe was nursed by his mother and sister. Bored in bed, he wrote an impudent crime comedy. In April 1770, his father lost his patience; Goethe left Frankfurt in order to finish his studies in Strasbourg.

In Alsace, Goethe blossomed. No other landscape has he described as affectionately as the warm, wide Rhine area. In Strasbourg, Goethe met Johann Gottfried Herder, who happened to be in town on the occasion of an eye operation. The two became close friends, and crucially to Goethe's intellectual development, it was Herder who kindled his interest in Shakespeare, Ossian and in the notion of Volkspoesie (folk poetry). On October 14, 1772 he held a speech in his parental home in honour of the first German "Shakespeare Day". His first meeting with Shakespeare's works is described as his personal awakening in literature.

On a trip to the village Sessenheim, Goethe fell in love with Friederike Brion, in October 1770, but, after ten months, terminated the relationship in August 1771. Several of his poems, like '''', '''' and '''', originate from this time.

At the end of August 1771, Goethe was certified as a licensee in Frankfurt. He wanted to make the jurisdiction progressively more humane. In his first cases, he proceeded too vigorously, was reprimanded and lost the position. This prematurely terminated his career as a lawyer after only a few months. At this time, Goethe was acquainted with the court of Darmstadt, where his inventiveness was praised. From this milieu came Johann Georg Schlosser (who was later to become his brother-in-law) and Johann Heinrich Merck. Goethe also pursued literary plans again; this time, his father did not have anything against it, and even helped. Goethe obtained a copy of the biography of a noble highwayman from the German Peasants' War. In a couple of weeks the biography was reworked into a colourful drama. Entitled ''Götz von Berlichingen,'' the work went directly to the heart of Goethe's contemporaries.

Goethe could not subsist on being one of the editors of a literary periodical (published by Schlosser and Merck). In May 1772 he once more began the practice of law at Wetzlar. In 1774 he wrote the book which would bring him worldwide fame, ''The Sorrows of Young Werther''. The outer shape of the work's plot is widely taken over from what Goethe experienced during his Wetzlar time with Charlotte Buff (1753–1828) and her fiancé, Johann Christian Kestner (1741–1800), as well as from the suicide of the author's friend Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem (1747–1772); in it, Goethe made a desperate passion of what was in reality a hearty and relaxed friendship. Despite the immense success of ''Werther'', it did not bring Goethe much financial gain because copyright law at the time were essentially nonexistent. (In later years Goethe would bypass this problem by periodically authorizing "new, revised" editions of his Complete Works.)

Early years in Weimar

In 1775, Goethe was invited, on the strength of his fame as the author of ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'', to the court of Carl August, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, who would become Grand Duke in 1815. (The Duke at the time was 18 years of age, to Goethe's 26.) Goethe thus went to live in Weimar, where he remained for the rest of his life and where, over the course of many years, he held a succession of offices, becoming the Duke's chief adviser.

In 1776, Goethe formed a close relationship to Charlotte von Stein, an older, married woman. The intimate bond with Frau von Stein lasted for ten years, after which Goethe abruptly left for Italy without giving his companion any notice. She was emotionally distraught at the time, but they were eventually reconciled.

Goethe, aside from official duties, was also a friend and confidant to the Duke, and participated fully in the activities of the court. For Goethe, his first ten years at Weimar could well be described as a garnering of a degree and range of experience which perhaps could be achieved in no other way. Goethe was ennobled in 1782 (this being indicated by the "von" in his name).

Italy

Goethe's journey to the Italian peninsula from 1786 to 1788 was of great significance in his aesthetical and philosophical development. His father had made a similar journey during his own youth, and his example was a major motivating factor for Goethe to make the trip. More importantly, however, the work of Johann Joachim Winckelmann had provoked a general renewed interest in the classical art of ancient Greece and Rome. Thus Goethe's journey had something of the nature of a pilgrimage to it. During the course of his trip Goethe met and befriended the artists Angelica Kauffmann and Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, as well as encountering such notable characters as Lady Hamilton and Alessandro Cagliostro (see Affair of the Diamond Necklace).

He also journeyed to Sicily during this time, and wrote intriguingly that "To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is to not have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything." While in Southern Italy and Sicily, Goethe encountered, for the first time genuine Greek (as opposed to Roman) architecture, and was quite startled by its relative simplicity. Winckelmann had not recognized the distinctness of the two styles.

Goethe's diaries of this period form the basis of the non-fiction ''Italian Journey''. ''Italian Journey'' only covers the first year of Goethe's visit. The remaining year is largely undocumented, aside from the fact that he spent much of it in Venice. This "gap in the record" has been the source of much speculation over the years.

In the decades which immediately followed its publication in 1816 ''Italian Journey'' inspired countless German youths to follow Goethe's example. This is pictured, somewhat satirically, in George Eliot's ''Middlemarch''.

Weimar

In late 1792, Goethe took part in the battle of Valmy against revolutionary France, assisting Duke Carl August of Saxe-Weimar during the failed invasion of France. Again during the Siege of Mainz he assisted Carl August as a military observer. His written account of these events can be found within his Complete Works.

In 1794 Friedrich Schiller wrote to Goethe offering friendship; they had previously had only a mutually wary relationship ever since first becoming acquainted in 1788. This collaborative friendship lasted until Schiller's death in 1805.

In 1806, Goethe was living in Weimar with his mistress Christiane Vulpius, the sister of Christian A Vulpius, and their son Julius August Walter von Goethe. On 13 October, Napoleon's army invaded the town. The French "spoon guards," the least-disciplined soldiers, occupied Goethe's house.

The next day, Goethe legitimized their eighteen year relationship by marrying Christiane in a quiet marriage service at the court chapel. They already had several children together by this time, including their son, Julius August Walter von Goethe (25 December 1789 — 28 October 1830), whose wife, Ottilie von Pogwisch (31 October 1796 – 26 October 1872), cared for the elder Goethe until his death in 1832. The younger couple had three children: Walther, Freiherr von Goethe (9 April 1818 — 15 April 1885), Wolfgang, Freiherr von Goethe (18 September 1820 – 20 January 1883) and Alma von Goethe (29 October 1827 — 29 September 1844). Christiane von Goethe died in 1816.

Later life

After 1793, Goethe devoted his endeavours primarily to literature. By 1820, Goethe was on amiable terms with Kaspar Maria von Sternberg. In 1823, having recovered from a near fatal heart illness, Goethe fell in love with Ulrike von Levetzow whom he wanted to marry, but because of the opposition of her mother he never proposed. Their last meeting in Carlsbad on 5 September 1823 inspired him to the famous ''Marienbad Elegy'' which he considered one of his finest works.

In 1832, Goethe died in Weimar. He is buried in the Ducal Vault at Weimar's Historical Cemetery.

Eckermann closes his famous work, ''Conversations with Goethe'', with this passage:

The first production of Richard Wagner's opera ''Lohengrin'' took place in Weimar in 1850. The conductor was Franz Liszt, who chose the date 28 August in honour of Goethe, who was born on 28 August 1749.

Literary work

The most important of Goethe's works produced before he went to Weimar were his tragedies ''Götz von Berlichingen'' (1773), which was the first work to bring him recognition, and the novel ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'' (called ''Die Leiden des jungen Werthers'' in German) (1774), which gained him enormous fame as a writer in the ''Sturm und Drang'' period which marked the early phase of Romanticism – indeed the book is often considered to be the "spark" which ignited the movement, and can arguably be called the world's first "best-seller". (For the entirety of his life this was the work with which the vast majority of Goethe's contemporaries associated him). During the years at Weimar before he met Schiller he began ''Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship'', wrote the dramas ''Iphigenie auf Tauris'' (''Iphigenia in Tauris''), ''Egmont'', ''Torquato Tasso'', and the fable ''Reineke Fuchs''.

To the period of his friendship with Schiller belong Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years (the continuation of ''Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship''), the idyll of ''Hermann and Dorothea'', the ''Roman Elegies '' and the verse drama ''The Natural Daughter''. In the last period, between Schiller's death, in 1805, and his own, appeared ''Faust Part One'', ''Elective Affinities'', the ''West-Eastern Divan'' (a collection of poems in the Persian style, influenced by the work of Hafez), his autobiographical ''Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit'' (''From My Life: Poetry and Truth'') which covers his early life and ends with his departure for Weimar, his ''Italian Journey'', and a series of treatises on art. His writings were immediately influential in literary and artistic circles.

''Faust Part Two'' was only finished in the year of his death, and was published posthumously.

Goethe also appears to have come under the influence of Europe's Oriental renaissance, and fascinated by "Abhijñānaśākuntalam" of Kalidasa, which was one of the first works of Indian literature that became known in Europe, after being translated from English to German. Goethe composed the following sonnet:

As per the translation of E. B. Eastwick:

Talking about Kalidasa's work, Goethe comments: "Here the poet seems to be in the height of his talent in representation of the natural order, of the finest mode of life, of the purest moral endeavor, of the most worthy sovereign, and of the most sober divine meditation; still he remains in such a manner the lord and master of his creation."

Scientific work

Although his literary work has attracted the greatest amount of interest, Goethe was also keenly involved in studies of natural science. He wrote several works on plant morphology, and colour theory. Goethe also had the largest private collection of minerals in all of Europe. By the time of his death, in order to gain a comprehensive view in geology, he had collected 17,800 rock samples.

His focus on morphology and what was later called homology influenced 19th century naturalists, although his ideas of transformation were about the continuous metamorphosis of living things and did not relate to contemporary ideas of "transformisme" or transmutation of species. Homology, or as Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire called it "analogie", was used by Charles Darwin as strong evidence of common descent and of laws of variation. Goethe's studies led him to independently discover the human intermaxillary bone in 1784, which Broussonet (1779) and Vicq d'Azyr (1780) had (using different methods) identified several years earlier. While not the only one in his time to question the prevailing view that this bone did not exist in humans, Goethe, who believed ancient anatomists had known about this bone, was the first to prove its peculiarity to all mammals. In 1790, he published his ''Metamorphosis of Plants''.

During his Italian journey, Goethe formulated a theory of plant metamorphosis in which the archetypal form of the plant is to be found in the ''leaf'' – he writes, "from top to bottom a plant is all leaf, united so inseparably with the future bud that one cannot be imagined without the other".

Goethe popularized the Goethe Barometer using a principle established by Toricelli. According to Hegel, 'Goethe has occupied himself a good deal with meteorology; barometer readings interested him particularly... What he says is important: the main thing is that he gives a comparative table of barometric readings during the whole month of December 1822, at Weimar, Jena, London, Boston, Vienna, Töpel... He claims to deduce from it that the barometric level varies in the same propoportion not only in each zone but that it has the same variation, too, at different altitudes above sea-level'.

In 1810, Goethe published his ''Theory of Colours'', which he considered his most important work. In it, he contentiously characterized color as arising from the dynamic interplay of light and darkness through the mediation of a turbid medium. In 1816, Schopenhauer went on to develop his own theory in ''On Vision and Colors'' based on the observations supplied in Goethe's book. After being translated into English by Charles Eastlake in 1840, his theory became widely adopted by the art world, most notably J. M. W. Turner. Goethe's work also inspired the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, to write his ''Remarks on Color''. Goethe was vehemently opposed to Newton's analytic treatment of color, engaging instead in compiling a comprehensive description of a wide variety of color phenomena. Although the accuracy of Goethe's observations does not admit a great deal of criticism, his theory's failure to demonstrate significant predictive validity eventually rendered it scientifically irrelevant. Goethe was, however, the first to systematically study the physiological effects of color, and his observations on the effect of opposed colors led him to a symmetric arrangement of his color wheel, 'for the colors diametrically opposed to each other… are those which reciprocally evoke each other in the eye. (Goethe, ''Theory of Colours'', 1810). In this, he anticipated Ewald Hering's opponent color theory (1872).

Goethe outlines his method in the essay ''The experiment as mediator between subject and object'' (1772). In the Kurschner edition of Goethe's works, the science editor, Rudolf Steiner, presents Goethe's approach to science as phenomenological. Steiner elaborated on that in the books ''The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception'' and ''Goethe’s World View'', in which he emphasizes the need of the perceiving organ of intuition in order to grasp Goethe's biological archetype (i.e., ''The Typus'').

Key works

thumb|[[Goethe–Schiller monuments|Goethe-Schiller Monument (1857), Weimar. |alt=Photograph of a large bronze statue of two men standing side-by-side and facing forward. The statue is on a stone pedestal, which has a plaque that reads "Dem Dichterpaar/Goethe und Schiller/das Vaterland".]] The short epistolary novel, ''Die Leiden des jungen Werthers'', or ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'', published in 1774, recounts an unhappy romantic infatuation that ends in suicide. Goethe admitted that he "shot his hero to save himself": a reference to Goethe's own near-suicidal obsession with a young woman during this period, an obsession he quelled through the writing process. The novel remains in print in dozens of languages and its influence is undeniable; its central hero, an obsessive figure driven to despair and destruction by his unrequited love for the young Lotte, has become a pervasive literary archetype. The fact that ''Werther'' ends with the protagonist's suicide and funeral a funeral which "no clergyman attended" made the book deeply controversial upon its (anonymous) publication, for on the face of it, it appeared to condone and glorify suicide. Suicide was considered sinful by Christian doctrine: suicides were denied Christian burial with the bodies often mistreated and dishonoured in various ways; in corollary, the deceased's property and possessions were often confiscated by the Church. Epistolary novels were common during this time, letter-writing being a primary mode of communication. What set Goethe's book apart from other such novels was its expression of unbridled longing for a joy beyond possibility, its sense of defiant rebellion against authority, and of principal importance, its total subjectivity: qualities that trailblazed the Romantic movement.

The next work, his epic closet drama ''Faust'', was to be completed in stages, and only published in its entirety after his death. The first part was published in 1808 and created a sensation. The first operatic version, by Spohr, appeared in 1814, and was subsequently the inspiration for operas and oratorios by Schumann, Berlioz, Gounod, Boito, Busoni, and Schnittke as well as symphonic works by Liszt, Wagner, and Mahler. Faust became the ur-myth of many figures in the 19th century. Later, a facet of its plot, i.e., of selling one's soul to the devil for power over the physical world, took on increasing literary importance and became a view of the victory of technology and of industrialism, along with its dubious human expenses. In 1919, the Goetheanum staged the world premiere of a complete production of Faust. On occasion, the play is still staged in Germany and other parts around the world.

Goethe's poetic work served as a model for an entire movement in German poetry termed ''Innerlichkeit'' ("introversion") and represented by, for example, Heine. Goethe's words inspired a number of compositions by, among others, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Berlioz and Wolf. Perhaps the single most influential piece is "Mignon's Song" which opens with one of the most famous lines in German poetry, an allusion to Italy: "''''?" ("Do you know the land where the lemon trees bloom?").

He is also widely quoted. Epigrams such as "Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him", "Divide and rule, a sound motto; unite and lead, a better one", and "Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must", are still in usage or are often paraphrased. Lines from ''Faust'', such as "", "", or "" have entered everyday German usage.

It may be taken as another measure of Goethe's fame that other well-known quotations are often incorrectly attributed to him, such as Hippocrates' "Art is long, life is short", which is found in Goethe's ''Faust'' ("Art is something so long to be learned, and life is so short!") and ''Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship''.

Eroticism

Many of Goethe's works, especially ''Faust'', the ''Roman Elegies'', and the ''Venetian Epigrams'', depict heterosexual and homosexual erotic passions and acts. For instance, in ''Faust'', the first use of Faust's power after literally signing a contract with the devil is to fall in love with and impregnate a teenage girl. In fact, some of the ''Venetian Epigrams'' were held back from publication due to their sexual content. In his 1999 book ''The Tiger's Tender Touch: The Erotic Life of Goethe'', Karl Hugo Pruys argued (with great controversy in Germany) that Goethe's writings suggest he may have been gay. Goethe's sexual portraitures and allusions may have been inspired by his sojourn in Italy, where some men, trying to avoid both the prevalence of venereal disease among prostitutes, and the demand of marriage among 'maidens', embraced homosexuality. Whatever the case, Goethe clearly saw human sexuality as a topic worthy of poetic and artistic depiction, an idea that was uncommon in a time when the private nature of sexuality was rigorously normative, and one which may make him a more modern thinker than he is typically considered.

Religion

Born into a Lutheran family, Goethe's early faith was shaken by news of such events as the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and the Seven Years' War. In July 1782, he described himself as "not anti-Christian, nor un-Christian, but most decidedly non-Christian." In his Venetian Epigram 66, Goethe listed four things that he disliked: "tobacco smoke, bugs and garlic and the cross." In the book ''Conversations with Goethe'' by Goethe's secretary Eckermann, however, Goethe is portrayed as enthusiastic about Christianity, Jesus, Martin Luther, and the Protestant Reformation, even calling Christianity the "ultimate religion". Although he opposed many of the central teachings of the Christian churches, he thought that he could nevertheless be inwardly Christian.

His later spiritual perspective evolved among pantheism (heavily influenced by Spinoza), humanism, and various elements of Western esotericism, as seen most vividly in Part II of ''Faust''. According to Nietzsche, Goethe had "a kind of almost ''joyous'' and ''trusting fatalism''" that has "faith that only in the totality everything redeems itself and appears good and justified."

On the other hand, a year before his death he expressed an identification with the Hypsistarians, an ancient Jewish-pagan sect of the Black Sea region. After describing his difficulties with mainstream religion, Goethe laments:

In politics Goethe was conservative. At the time of the French Revolution, he thought the enthusiasm of the students and professors to be a perversion of their energy and remained skeptical of the ability of the masses to govern. His non-fiction writings, most of which are philosophic and aphoristic in nature, spurred the development of many philosophers, including G.W.F. Hegel, Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernst Cassirer, Carl Jung, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Along with Schiller, he was one of the leading figures of Weimar Classicism.

Goethe embodied many of the contending strands in art over the next century: his work could be lushly emotional, and rigorously formal, brief and epigrammatic, and epic. He would argue that classicism was the means of controlling art, and that romanticism was a sickness, even as he penned poetry rich in memorable images, and rewrote the formal rules of German poetry. Even in contemporary culture, he stands in the background as the author of the ballad upon which Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice is based.

His poetry was set to music by almost every major Austrian and German composer from Mozart to Mahler, and his influence would spread to French drama and opera as well. Beethoven declared that a "Faust" Symphony would be the greatest thing for art. Liszt and Mahler both created symphonies in whole or in large part inspired by this seminal work, which would give the 19th century one of its most paradigmatic figures: Doctor Faustus. The Faust tragedy/drama, often called '''' (the drama of the Germans), written in two parts published decades apart, would stand as his most characteristic and famous artistic creation. Followers of the twentieth century esotericist Rudolf Steiner built a theatre named the Goetheanum after him – where festival performances of Faust are still performed.

Goethe was also a cultural force, and by researching folk traditions, he created many of the norms for celebrating Christmas, and argued that the organic nature of the land moulded the people and their customs—an argument that has recurred ever since. He argued that laws could not be created by pure rationalism, since geography and history shaped habits and patterns. This stood in sharp contrast to the prevailing Enlightenment view that reason was sufficient to create well-ordered societies and good laws.

It was to a considerable degree due to Goethe's reputation that the city of Weimar was chosen in 1919 as the venue for the national assembly, convened to draft a new constitution for what would become known as Germany's Weimar Republic.

The Federal Republic of Germany’s cultural institution, The Goethe-Institut is named after him, and promotes the study of German abroad and fosters knowledge about Germany by providing information on its culture, society and politics.

The literary estate of Goethe in the Goethe and Schiller Archives was inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2001 in recognition of its historical significance.

Goethe's influence was dramatic because he understood that there was a transition in European sensibilities, an increasing focus on sense, the indescribable, and the emotional. This is not to say that he was emotionalistic or excessive; on the contrary, he lauded personal restraint and felt that excess was a disease: "There is nothing worse than imagination without taste". He argued in his scientific works that a "formative impulse", which he said is operative in every organism, causes an organism to form itself according to its own distinct laws, and therefore rational laws or fiats could not be imposed at all from a higher, transcendent sphere; this placed him in direct opposition to those who attempted to form "enlightened" monarchies based on "rational" laws by, for example, Joseph II of Austria or the subsequent Emperor of the French, Napoleon I. A quotation from Goethe's ''Scientific Studies'' will suffice:

That change later became the basis for 19th-century thought: organic rather than geometrical, evolving rather than created, and based on sensibility and intuition rather than on imposed order, culminating in, as Goethe said, a "living quality," wherein the subject and object are dissolved together in a poise of inquiry. Consequently, Goethe embraced neither teleological nor deterministic views of growth within every organism. Instead, his view was that the world as a whole grows through continual, external, and internal strife. Moreover, Goethe did not embrace the mechanistic views that contemporaneous science subsumed during his time, and therewith he denied rationality's superiority as the sole interpreter of reality. Furthermore, Goethe declared that all knowledge is related to humanity through its functional value alone and that knowledge presupposes a perspectival quality. He also stated that the fundamental nature of the world is aesthetic.

His views make him, along with Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, and Ludwig van Beethoven, a figure in two worlds: on the one hand, devoted to the sense of taste, order, and finely crafted detail, which is the hallmark of the artistic sense of the Age of Reason and the neo-classical period of architecture; on the other, seeking a personal, intuitive, and personalized form of expression and society, firmly supporting the idea of self-regulating and organic systems. Thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson would take up many similar ideas in the 1800s. Goethe's ideas on evolution would frame the question that Darwin and Wallace would approach within the scientific paradigm.

Bibliography

''Goethe: The History of a Man'' by Emil Ludwig

''Goethe'' by Georg Brandes

''Goethe: his life and times'' by Richard Friedenthal

''Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns'' by Thomas Mann

''Conversations with Goethe'' by Johann Peter Eckermann

''Goethe's World: as seen in letters and memoirs'' ed. by Berthold Biermann

''Goethe: Four Studies'' by Albert Schweitzer

''Goethe and his Publishers'' by Siegfried Unseld

''Goethe: The Poet and the Age'' (2 Vols.), by Nicholas Boyle

''Goethe's Concept of the Daemonic: After the Ancients'', by Angus Nicholls

''Goethe and Rousseau: Resonances of their Mind'', by Carl Hammer, Jr.

''Doctor Faustus of the popular legend, Marlowe, the Puppet-Play, Goethe, and Lenau, treated historically and critically.-A parallel between Goethe and Schiller.-An historic outline of German Literature '', by Louis Pagel

''Goethe and Schiller, Essays on German Literature'', by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

''Tales for Transformation'', trans. Scott Thompson

''Goethe-Wörterbuch'' (Goethe Dictionary, abbreviated GWb). Herausgegeben von der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen und der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Stuttgart. Verlag W. Kohlhammer. ISBN X-0000-2730-6

See also

Goethe Basin

Minna Herzlieb

Johann-Wolfgang-von-Goethe-Gymnasium

Ulrike von Levetzow

List of works by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

W. H. Murray -- author of misattributed quotation "Until one is committed..."

Dora Stock – her encounters with the 16-year-old Goethe

References

External links

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes and Sayings

Goethean Science Site

Goethe Quotes

List and links to 61 works.

Goethe in English at ''Poems Found in Translation''

The Lied and Art Song Texts Page Poems of Goethe set in music

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Goethe's Delicate Empiricism," A Special Issue of Janus Head

Goethe's dual language poems (from German to other languages)

Goethe Statue – Lincoln Park in Chicago, Illinois, United States

Famous Quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Elective affinities Reprinted by Cornell University Library Digital Collections

Category:1749 births Category:1832 deaths Category:People from Frankfurt Category:German novelists Category:German poets Category:German dramatists and playwrights Category:German travel writers Category:German autobiographers Category:Natural philosophers Category:Color scientists Category:German non-fiction writers Category:German-language poets Category:German philosophers Category:German Lutherans Category:German nobility Category:Members of the Zentrale Dombauverein zu Köln von 1842 Category:Walhalla enshrinees Category:Romantic poets Category:Illuminati members Category:Pantheists Category:University of Leipzig alumni Category:Fellows of the Leopoldina Category:University of Strasbourg alumni Category:18th-century German people Category:19th-century theatre

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Coordinates	44°25′57″N26°6′14″N
region	Western Philosophy
Era	20th-century philosophy
Color	#B0C4DE
Name	Jean-Luc Nancy
Birth date	July 26, 1940
School tradition	Continental philosophy
Main interests	Deconstruction
Influences	Heidegger Derrida Lacoue-Labarthe Hegel | }}

Jean-Luc Nancy (born July 26, 1940, Paris, France) is a French philosopher.

Nancy's first book, published in 1973, was ''Le titre de la lettre'' (''The Title of the Letter'', 1992), a reading of the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, written in collaboration with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. Nancy is the author of works on many thinkers, including ''La remarque spéculative'' in 1973 (''The Speculative Remark'', 2001) on G.W.F. Hegel, ''Le Discours de la syncope'' (1976) and ''L’Impératif catégorique'' (1983) on Immanuel Kant, ''Ego sum'' (1979) on René Descartes, and ''Le Partage des voix'' (1982) on Martin Heidegger. In addition to ''Le titre de la lettre'', Nancy collaborated with Lacoue-Labarthe on several other books and articles. Major influences include Jacques Derrida, Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Biography

Jean-Luc Nancy graduated in philosophy in 1962 in Paris. He taught for a short while in Colmar before becoming an assistant at the Strasbourg ''Institut de Philosophie'' in 1968. In 1973, he received his doctorate with a dissertation on Kant under the supervision of Paul Ricœur. Nancy was then promoted to ''Maître de conférences'' at the ''Université des Sciences Humaines de Strasbourg''. In the 1970s and 1980s, Nancy was a guest professor at universities all over the world, from the University of California to the ''Freie Universität'' in Berlin. He has been invited as a cultural delegate of the French Ministry of External Affairs to speak in Eastern Europe, Britain and the United States. In 1987, Nancy received his ''Docteur d'état'' from the ''Université de Toulouse-Le-Mirail'' under the supervision of Gérard Granel and a jury including Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Derrida. It was published as ''L'expérience de la liberté'' (1988).

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Nancy suffered serious medical problems. He underwent a heart transplant and his recovery was made more difficult by a long-term fight with cancer. He stopped teaching and quit participating in almost all of the committees with which he was engaged, but continued to write. Many of his best known texts were published during this time. An account of his experience, ''L'intrus'' (''The Intruder''), was published in 2000.

Nancy is Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School and at the University of Strasbourg.

Filmmaker Claire Denis has made at least two movies inspired by Jean-Luc Nancy and his works. Many other artists have worked with Nancy as well, such as Simon Hantaï, Soun-gui Kim and Phillip Warnell . Nancy has written about the filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami and featured prominently in the film ''The Ister''.

Major works

''Les Fins de l'homme''

In 1980, Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe organized a conference in Cerisy-la-Salle on Derrida and politics entitled "Les Fins de l'homme" ("The Ends of Man"). The conference solidified Derrida’s place at the forefront of contemporary philosophy, and was a place to begin an in-depth conversation between philosophy and contemporary politics. Further to their desire to rethink the political, Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe set up in the same year the ''Centre de Recherches Philosophiques sur la Politique'' (Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political). The Centre was dedicated to pursuing philosophical rather than empirical approaches to political questions, and supported such speakers as Claude Lefort and Jean-François Lyotard. By 1984, however, Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe were dissatisfied with the direction work at the centre was taking, and it was closed down.

During that period Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy produced several important papers, together and separately. Some of these texts appear in ''Les Fins de l'homme à partir du travail de Jacques Derrida: colloque de Cerisy, 23 juillet-2 août 1980'' (1981), ''Rejouer le politique'' (1981), ''La retrait du politique'' (1983), and ''Le mythe nazi'' (1991, revised edition; originally published as ''Les méchanismes du fascisme'', 1981). Many of these texts are gathered in translation in ''Retreating the Political'' (1997).

''La Communauté désœuvrée''

Nancy’s first book on the question of community, ''La Communauté désœuvrée'' (''The Inoperative Community'', 1982), is perhaps his best-known work. This text is an introduction to some of the main philosophical themes Nancy continued to work with. Nancy traces the influence of the notion of community to concepts of experience, discourse, and the individual, and argues that it has dominated modern thought. Discarding popular notions, Nancy redefines community, asking what can it be if it is reduced neither to a collection of separate individuals, nor to a hypostasized communal substance, e.g., fascism. He writes that our attempt to design society according to pre-planned definitions frequently leads to social violence and political terror, posing the social and political question of how to proceed with the development of society with this knowledge in mind. ''La Communauté désœuvrée'' means that community is not the result of a production, be it social, economic or even political (nationalist) production; it is not ''une œuvre'', a "work of art" ("œuvre d'art", but "art" is here understood in the sense of "artifice").

''La communauté inavouable'' (''The Unavowable Community'', 1988), a short work by Maurice Blanchot, was a response to Nancy’s work on community (and inspired as well by Georges Bataille, whose work on sovereignty is discussed in ''La communauté désoeuvrée''). The dialogue between Nancy and Blanchot would continue until Blanchot's death.

''L'Expérience de la liberté''

Nancy's dissertation for his ''Docteur d'etat'' looked at the works of Kant, Schelling, Sartre and Heidegger, and concentrated on their treatment of the topic of freedom. It was published in 1988 as ''L'Expérience de la Liberté'' (''The Experience of Freedom''). Since then, Nancy has continued to concentrate on developing a reorientation of Heidegger’s work. Nancy treats freedom as a property of the individual or collectivity, and looks for a "non-subjective" freedom which would attempt to think the existential or finite origin for every freedom. Nancy argues that it is necessary to think freedom in its finite being, because to think of it as the property of an infinite subject is to make any finite being a limit of freedom. The existence of the other is the necessary condition of freedom, rather than its limitation.

''Le sens du monde''

Nancy addresses the world in its contemporary global configuration in other writings on freedom, justice and sovereignty. In his 1993 book ''Le sens du monde'' (''The Sense of the World''), he asks what we mean by saying that we live in one world, and how our sense of the world is changed by saying that it is situated within the world, rather than above or apart from it. To Nancy, the world, or existence, is our ontological responsibility, which precedes political, judicial and moral responsibility. He describes our being in the world as an exposure to a naked existence, without the possibility of support by a fundamental metaphysical order or cause. Contemporary existence no longer has recourse to a divine framework, as was the case in feudal society where the meaning and course of life was predetermined. The contingency of our naked existence as an ontological question is the main challenge of our existence in contemporary global society.

All of these themes relating to world are taken up again by Nancy in his 2002 book ''La création du monde ou la mondialisation'' (''The Creation of the World or Globalization''), where he makes the distinction between globalization as a deterministic process and mondialisation as an open-ended "world-forming" process. Here, he connects his critique with Marx's critique of political economy, which saw "free labour" as what produces the world. Nancy argues that an authentic "dwelling" in the world must be concerned with the creation of meaning (enjoyment) and not final purposes, closed essences, and exclusive worldviews. The present system of expanding cities and nodes in the planetary techno-scientific network (tied to capitalism) leads to the loss of world, because the world is treated as an object (globe), even though the self-deconstruction of ontotheology increasingly made it the "subject" of its own creation.

''Être singulier pluriel''

In his book ''Être singulier pluriel'' (''Being Singular Plural'', 2000), Nancy tackles the question of how we can speak of a plurality of a "we" without making the "we" a singular identity. The premise of the title essay in this book is that there is no being without "being-with," that "I" does not come before "we" (i.e., ''Dasein'' does not precede ''Mitsein'') and that there is no existence without co-existence. In an extension from his thoughts on freedom, community, and the sense of the world, he imagines the "being-with" as a mutual exposure to one another that preserves the freedom of the "I", and thus a community that is not subject to an exterior or pre-existent definition.

The five essays that follow the title piece continue to develop Nancy’s philosophy through discussions of sovereignty, war and technology, identity, the Gulf War and Sarajevo. Nancy’s central concern in these essays remains the "being-with", which he uses to discuss issues of psychoanalysis, politics and multiculturalism, looking at notions of "self" and "other" in current contexts.

Artistic analysis

Nancy has also written for art catalogues and international art journals, especially on contemporary art. He also writes poetry and for the theatre and has earned respect as an influential philosopher of art and culture. In his book ''Les Muses'' published in 1994 (''The Muses'', 1996), he begins with an analysis of Hegel’s thesis on the death of art. Among the essays in ''The Muses'' is a piece on Caravaggio, originally a lecture given at the Louvre. In this essay, Nancy looks for a different conception of painting where painting is not a representation of the empirical world, but a presentation of the world, of sense, or of existence. Nancy has published books on film and music, as well as texts on the problem of representation, on the statute of literature, on image and violence, and on the work of On Kawara, Charles Baudelaire, and Friedrich Hölderlin.

Cinema

Nancy's text ''L'intrus'' formed the basis for French director Claire Denis's film of the same name.

He has written extensively on film, including ''The Evidence of Film,'' a short work on Abbas Kiarostami.

Nancy appears in the film ''The Ister'', based on Martin Heidegger's 1942 lectures on Friedrich Hölderlin's poem "Der Ister" (published as ''Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister"''). The film focuses on the relation of politics, technology and myth.

Nancy also appears in Phillip Warnell's recent short film, Outlandish: Strange Foreign Bodies, 2009.

See also

Deconstruction

Deconstruction-and-religion

List of thinkers influenced by deconstruction

Self-deconstructed Christianity

References

Bibliography

Titles in French

''La Remarque spéculative (Un bon mot de Hegel)''. Paris: Galilée, 1973.

''La titre de la lettre''. Paris: Galilée, 1973 (with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe).

''Le Discours de la syncope. I. Logodaedalus''. Paris: Flammarion, 1975.

''L'absolu littéraire. Théorie de la littérature du romantisme allemand''. Paris: Seuil, 1978 (with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe).

''Ego sum''. Paris: Flammarion, 1979.

''Les Fins de l'homme à partir du travail de Jacques Derrida: colloque de Cerisy, 23 juillet-2 août 1980''. 1981 (ed., with Lacoue-Labarthe).

''Rejouer le politique''. 1981 (ed., with Lacoue-Labarthe).

''Le partage des voix''. Paris: Galilée, 1982.

''La retrait du politique''. 1983 (ed., with Lacoue-Labarthe).

''La communauté désoeuvrée''. Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1983.

''L'Impératif catégorique''. Paris: Flammarion, 1983.

''L'oubli de la philosophie''. Paris: Galilée, 1986.

''Des lieux divins''. Mauvezin: T.E.R, 1987.

''L'expérience de la liberté''. Paris: Galilée, 1988.

''Une Pensée finie''. Paris: Galilée, 1990.

''Le poids d'une pensée''. Québec: Le griffon d'argile, 1991.

''Le mythe nazi''. La tour d'Aigues: L'Aube, 1991 (with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, revised edition; originally published as ''Les méchanismes du fascisme'', 1981).

''La comparution (politique à venir)''. Paris: Bourgois, 1991 (with Jean-Chrisophe Bailly).

''Corpus''. Paris: Métailié, 1992.

''Le sens du monde''. Paris: Galilée, 1993.

''Les Muses''. Paris: Galilée, 1994.

''Être singulier pluriel''. Paris: Galilée, 1996.

''Hegel. L'inquiétude du négatif''. Paris: Hachette, 1997.

''L'Intrus''. Paris: Galilée, 2000.

''Le regard du portrait''. Paris: Galilée, 2000.

''La pensée dérobée''. Paris: Galilée, 2001.

''The evidence of film''. Bruxelles: Yves Gevaert, 2001.

''La création du monde ou la mondialisation''. Paris: Galilée, 2002.

''Nus sommes. La peau des images''. Paris: Klincksieck, 2003 (with Federico Ferrari).

''Noli me tangere''. Paris: Bayard, 2003.

"L'extension de l'âme". Metz: Le Portique, 2003.

"L''il y a' du rapport sexuel". Paris: Galilée, 2003.

''La déclosion (Déconstruction du Christianisme 1)''. Paris: Galilée, 2005.

''Sur le commerce des pensées: Du livre et de la librairie''. Paris: Galilée, 2005.

''Iconographiee de l'auteur''. Paris: Galilée, 2005 (with Federico Ferrari).

''Tombe de sommeil''. Paris: Galilée, 2007.

''Juste impossible''. Paris: Bayard, 2007.

''A plus d'un titre: Jacques Derrida''. Paris: Galilée, 2007.

''Verite de la democratie''. Paris: Galilée, 2008.

''Le poids d'une pensée, l'approche''. Strasbourg: La Phocide, 2008.

''Je t'aime, un peu, beaucoup, passionnément...'' Paris: Bayard Centurion, 2008.

''Démocratie, dans quel état ?'', with Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Daniel Bensaïd, Wendy Brown, Jacques Rancière, Kristin Ross and Slavoj Žižek, La Fabrique, 2009.

''L'Adoration'', Paris, Galilée, 2010.

''Atlan : Les Détrempes'', Paris, Hazan, 2010.

English translations

''The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism''. With Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. Albany: SUNY Press, 1988.

''The Inoperative Community''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.

''The Title of the Letter: A Reading of Lacan''. With Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992.

''The Birth to Presence''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993.

''The Experience of Freedom''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993.

''The Muses''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.

''The Gravity of Thought''. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1997.

''Retreating the Political''. With Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe; edited by Simon Sparks. London: Routledge, 1997.

''The Sense of the World''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.

''Being Singular Plural''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.

''The Speculative Remark: One of Hegel's Bons Mots''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.

''Hegel: The Restlessness of the Negative''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.

''A Finite Thinking''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003

''The Ground of the Image''. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005.

''Multiple Arts (The Muses II)''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.

''The Creation of the World or Globalization''. Albany: SUNY Press, 2007.

''Listening''. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007.

''The Discourse of the Syncope: Logodaedalus''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.

''Dis-Enclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity''. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.

''Philosophical Chronicles (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy)''. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.

''Noli Me Tangere: On the Raising of the Body''. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.

''Corpus''. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.

''On the Commerce of Thinking: On Books and Bookstores''. New York: Fordham University Press, 2009.

''The Fall of Sleep''. New York: Fordham University Press, 2009.

''The Truth of Democracy''. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010.

''God, Justice, Love, Beauty: Four Little Dialogues''. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011.

Secondary literature

Armstrong, Phillip. ''Reticulations: Jean-Luc Nancy and the Networks of the Political''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.

Derrida, Jacques. ''On Touching, Jean-Luc Nancy''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005.

Hutchens, B.C. ''Jean-Luc Nancy and The Future of Philosophy''. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005.

James, Ian. ''The Fragmentary Demand: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.

Kamuf, Peggy, ed. ''On the Work of Jean-Luc Nancy: A Special Issue of Paragraph''. Nov. 1992

Sparks, Simon, ed. ''On Jean-Luc Nancy: The Sense of Philosophy''. London: Routledge, 1997.

''At the Heart: of Jean-Luc Nancy''. ''A Special Issue of The New Centennial Review'', Vol. 2, no.3, Fall 2002.

External links

Jean-Luc Nancy Faculty profile at the European Graduate School, includes bibliography, quotations, and video lectures.

Jean-Luc Nancy article at Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

On Communism, by Nancy.

Jean-Luc Nancy. Between Story and Truth. In: Little Mag. July / August 2001.

Emmanuel Alloa. The real outside is at the heart of the inside. Interview. Atopia. 2007.

Jean-Luc Nancy. The Technique of the Present. Lecture. Nouveau Musée. January 1997.

David Patrick. Review of The Sense of the World.

Adam Kotsko. Already, Not Yet. Review of La Déclosion: Déconstruction du christianisme. Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory. Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 87–95, Fall 2005.

Adolfo Vásquez Rocca. Las metáforas del cuerpo en la Filosofía de Jean-Luc Nancy: Nueva carne, cuerpo sin órganos y escatología de la enfermedad. In: Nomadas. Revista Crítica de Ciencias Sociales y Jurídicas. Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Nº 18, 2008 (1), January–June 2008. ISSN 1578-6730

Category:1940 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century philosophers Category:Continental philosophers Category:European Graduate School faculty Category:Deconstruction Category:French philosophers Category:21st-century philosophers

ca:Jean-Luc Nancy cs:Jean-Luc Nancy de:Jean-Luc Nancy es:Jean-Luc Nancy fr:Jean-Luc Nancy gl:Jean-Luc Nancy it:Jean-Luc Nancy ja:ジャン＝リュック・ナンシー ru:Нанси, Жан-Люк fi:Jean-Luc Nancy sv:Jean-Luc Nancy zh:讓-呂克·南希

Coordinates	44°25′57″N26°6′14″N
name	F. W. Murnau
birth name	Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe
birth date	December 28, 1888
birth place	Bielefeld, Germany
death date	March 11, 1931
death place	Santa Barbara, California, U.S.
occupation	Film director
years active	1919—1931
height	6'11 (2.10 m)
website	}}

Friedrich Wilhelm "F. W." Murnau (December 28, 1888 – March 11, 1931) was one of the most influential German film directors of the silent era, and a prominent figure in the expressionist movement in German cinema during the 1920s. Although some of Murnau's films have been lost, most still survive.

Early years

He was born as Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe in Bielefeld, Province of Westphalia. He attended the University of Heidelberg and studied art history. He took the name "Murnau" from the town in Germany named Murnau am Staffelsee. Openly gay, the 6'11 (210cm) director was said to have an icy, imperious disposition and an obsession with film. He was a combat pilot during World War I and directed his first film ''Der Knabe in Blau'' ('The Boy in Blue') in 1919.

German films

Murnau's most famous film is ''Nosferatu'', a 1922 adaptation of Bram Stoker's ''Dracula'' for which Stoker's widow sued for copyright infringement. Murnau lost the lawsuit and all prints of the film were ordered to be destroyed, but bootleg prints survived. The vampire, played by German stage actor Max Schreck, resembled a rat which was known to carry the plague. The origins of the word are from Stoker's novel, where it is used by the Romanian townsfolk to refer to Count Dracula and presumably, other undead.

Nearly as important as ''Nosferatu'' in Murnau's filmography was ''The Last Laugh'' ("Der Letzte Mann", German "The Last Man") (1924), written by Carl Mayer (a very prominent figure of the ''Kammerspielfilm'' movement) and starring Emil Jannings. The film introduced the subjective point of view camera, where the camera "sees" from the eyes of a character and uses visual style to convey a character's psychological state. It also anticipated the cinéma vérité movement in its subject matter. The film also utilized the "Unchained Camera Technique", a mix of tracking shots, pans, tilts, and zooms. Also, unlike the majority of Murnau's other works, ''The Last Laugh'' is considered a ''Kammerspielfilm'' with Expressionist elements. Unlike expressionist films, ''Kammerspielfilme'' are categorized by their chamber play influence, involving a lack of intricate set designs and story lines / themes regarding social injustice towards the working classes.

Murnau's last German film was the big budget ''Faust'' (1926) with Gösta Ekman as the title character, Emil Jannings as Mephisto and Camilla Horn as Gretchen. Murnau's film draws on older traditions of the legendary tale of Faust as well as on Goethe's classic version. The film is well-known for a sequence in which the giant, winged figure of Mephisto hovers over a town sowing the seeds of plague.

''Nosferatu'' (music by Hans Erdmann) and ''Faust'' (music by Werner Richard Heymann) were two of the first films to feature original film scores.

Hollywood

Murnau emigrated to Hollywood in 1926, where he joined the Fox Studio and made ''Sunrise'' (1927), a movie often cited by film scholars as one of the greatest films of all time. Filmed in the Fox Movietone sound-on-film system (music and sound effects only), ''Sunrise'' was not a financial success, but received several Oscars at the very first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929. In winning the Academy Award for Unique and Artistic Production it shared what is now the Best Picture award with the movie ''Wings''.

Murnau's next two films, the (now lost) ''Four Devils'' (1928) and ''City Girl'' (1930), were modified to adapt to the new era of sound film and were not well received. Their poor receptions disillusioned Murnau, and he quit Fox to journey for a while in the South Pacific.

Together with documentary film pioneer Robert Flaherty, Murnau travelled to Bora Bora to realize the film ''Tabu'' in 1931. Flaherty left after artistic disputes with Murnau who had to finish the movie on his own. The movie was censored in the United States for images of bare-breasted Polynesian women. The film was originally shot by cinematographer Floyd Crosby as half-talkie, half-silent, before being fully restored as a silent film — Murnau's preferred medium.

Death

Murnau did not live to see the premiere of his last film. He died in an automobile accident in Santa Barbara, California on 11 March 1931. Murnau was entombed on Southwest Cemetery (Südwest-Kirchhof Stahnsdorf) in Stahnsdorf near Berlin. Only 11 people attended the funeral. Among them were Robert Flaherty, Emil Jannings, Greta Garbo and Fritz Lang, who delivered the funeral speech. Garbo also commissioned a death mask of Murnau, which she kept on her desk during her years in Hollywood.

Legacy

In 2000, director E. Elias Merhige released ''Shadow of the Vampire'', a fictionalization of the making of ''Nosferatu''. Murnau is portrayed by John Malkovich. In the film, Murnau is so dedicated to making the film genuine that he actually hires a real vampire (Willem Dafoe) to play Count Orlok.

Filmography

''Der Knabe in Blau'' (''The Boy in Blue'', released 28 June 1919)

''Satanas'' (released around 30 January 1920 but made in 1919)

''Der Bucklige und die Tänzerin'' (''The Hunchback and the Dancer'', released 8 July 1920)

''Der Januskopf'' (''Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'' / ''The Head of Janus'', released 17 September 1920)

''Abend - Nacht - Morgen'' (''Evening - Night - Morning'', released October 1920)

''Sehnsucht'' (''Desire: The Tragedy of a Dancer'', released 18 October 1920)

''Der Gang in die Nacht'' (''Journey Into the Night'', released 13 December 1920)

''Schloß Vogelöd'' (''The Haunted Castle'', released April 1921)

''Marizza'' (released 20 January 1922 but filmed in 1921)

''Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens'' (''Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror'', released 5 March 1922)

''Der brennende Acker'' (''The Burning Soil'', released 16 March 1922)

''Phantom'' (released 29 October 1922)

''Die Austreibung'' (''The Expulsion'', released 23 October 1923)

''Die Finanzen des Großherzogs'' (''The Grand Duke's Finances'', released 7 January 1924)

''Der letzte Mann'' (''The Last Laugh'', released 23 December 1924)

''Herr Tartüff'' (''Tartuffe'', released 25 January 1926)

''Faust'' (released 14 October 1926)

''Sunrise'' (released 23 September 1927, won a special Oscar for "Unique Artistic Presentation" at the first Academy Awards)

''4 Devils'' (released 3 October 1928, is generally regarded as one of his best works and is a highly sought-after lost film)

''City Girl / Our Daily Bread'' (released 19 May 1930)

''Tabu'' (released 18 March 1931)

References

External links

Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Foundation, the legal successor to UFA, Bavaria, Terra, Tobis, and Berlin-Film

F. W. MURNAU at internettrash.com

F.W. Murnau at filmportal.de

Category:1888 births Category:1931 deaths Category:German film directors Category:German-language film directors Category:Horror film directors Category:German emigrants to the United States Category:German military personnel of World War I Category:LGBT directors Category:LGBT people from Germany Category:People from Bielefeld Category:People from the Province of Westphalia Category:Road accident deaths in California Category:Luftstreitkräfte personnel Category:Silent films by director an:Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau bg:Фридрих Мурнау ca:F. W. Murnau cs:Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau da:F. W. Murnau de:Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau el:Φρήντριχ Βίλεμ Μουρνάου es:Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau eo:Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau eu:F.W. Murnau fa:فریدریش ویلهلم مورنائو fr:Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau ko:프리드리히 빌헬름 무르나우 id:Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau it:Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau he:פרידריך וילהלם מורנאו lt:Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau hu:Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau nl:Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau ja:F・W・ムルナウ pl:Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau pt:Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau ru:Мурнау, Фридрих Вильгельм simple:Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau fi:F. W. Murnau sv:F.W. Murnau tr:Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau uk:Фрідріх Вільгельм Мурнау zh:F·W·穆瑙

thumb|200px|''Wanderer above the Sea of Fog'' (1818). 94.8 × 74.8 cm, Kunsthalle Hamburg. This well-known and especially Romantic masterpiece was described by the writer John Lewis Gaddis as leaving a contradictory impression, "suggesting at once mastery over a landscape and the insignificance of the individual within it. We see no face, so it's impossible to know whether the prospect facing the young man is exhilarating, or terrifying, or both."

Caspar David Friedrich (September 5, 1774 – May 7, 1840) was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins. His primary interest as an artist was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti-classical work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. Friedrich's paintings characteristically set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension".

Friedrich was born in the Swedish Pomeranian town of Greifswald, where he began his studies in art as a youth. He studied in Copenhagen until 1798, before settling in Dresden. He came of age during a period when, across Europe, a growing disillusionment with materialistic society was giving rise to a new appreciation of spirituality. This shift in ideals was often expressed through a reevaluation of the natural world, as artists such as Friedrich, J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) and John Constable (1776–1837) sought to depict nature as a "divine creation, to be set against the artifice of human civilization".

Friedrich’s work brought him renown early in his career, and contemporaries such as the French sculptor David d'Angers (1788–1856) spoke of him as a man who had discovered "the tragedy of landscape". Nevertheless, his work fell from favour during his later years, and he died in obscurity, and in the words of the art historian Philip Miller, "half mad". As Germany moved towards modernisation in the late 19th century, a new sense of urgency characterised its art, and Friedrich’s contemplative depictions of stillness came to be seen as the products of a bygone age. The early 20th century brought a renewed appreciation of his work, beginning in 1906 with an exhibition of thirty-two of his paintings and sculptures in Berlin. By the 1920s his paintings had been discovered by the Expressionists, and in the 1930s and early 1940s Surrealists and Existentialists frequently drew ideas from his work. The rise of Nazism in the early 1930s again saw a resurgence in Friedrich's popularity, but this was followed by a sharp decline as his paintings were, by association with the Nazi movement, misinterpreted as having a nationalistic aspect. It was not until the late 1970s that Friedrich regained his reputation as an icon of the German Romantic movement and a painter of international importance.

Life

Early years and family

Caspar David Friedrich was born on September 5, 1774, in Greifswald, Swedish Pomerania, on the Baltic coast of Germany. The sixth of ten children, he was brought up in the strict Lutheran creed of his father Adolf Gottlieb Friedrich, a candle-maker and soap boiler. Records of the family's financial circumstances are contradictory; while some sources indicate the children were privately tutored, others record that they were raised in relative poverty. Caspar David was familiar with death from an early age. His mother, Sophie Dorothea Bechly, died in 1781 when he was just seven. A year later, his sister Elisabeth died, while a second sister, Maria, succumbed to typhus in 1791. Some accounts suggest that Johann Christoffer perished while trying to rescue Caspar David, who was also in danger on the ice.

Friedrich began his formal study of art in 1790 as a private student of artist Johann Gottfried Quistorp at the University of Greifswald. Quistorp took his students on outdoor drawing excursions; as a result, Friedrich was encouraged to sketch from life at an early age. Through Quistorp, Friedrich met and was subsequently influenced by the theologian Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten, who taught that nature was a revelation of God. Quistorp introduced Friedrich to the work of the German 17th-century artist Adam Elsheimer, whose works often included religious subjects dominated by landscape, and nocturnal subjects. During this period he also studied literature and aesthetics with Swedish professor Thomas Thorild. Four years later Friedrich entered the prestigious Academy of Copenhagen, where he began his education by making copies of casts from antique sculptures before proceeding to drawing from life. Living in Copenhagen afforded the young painter access to the Royal Picture Gallery’s collection of 17th-century Dutch landscape painting. At the Academy he studied under teachers such as Christian August Lorentzen and the landscape painter Jens Juel. These artists were inspired by the ''Sturm und Drang'' movement and represented a midpoint between the dramatic intensity and expressive manner of the budding Romantic aesthetic and the waning neo-classical ideal. Mood was paramount, and influence was drawn from such sources as the Icelandic legend of Edda, the poems of Ossian and Norse mythology.

Friedrich settled permanently in Dresden in 1798. During this early period, he experimented in printmaking with etchings and designs for woodcuts which his furniture-maker brother cut. By 1804 he had produced 18 etchings and four woodcuts; they were apparently made in small numbers and only distributed to friends. Despite these forays into other media, he gravitated toward working primarily with ink, watercolour and sepias. With the exception of a few early pieces, such as ''Landscape with Temple in Ruins'' (1797), he did not work extensively with oils until his reputation was more established. Landscapes were his preferred subject, inspired by frequent trips, beginning in 1801, to the Baltic coast, Bohemia, the Riesen and the Harz Mountains. Mostly based on the landscapes of northern Germany, his paintings depict woods, hills, harbors, morning mists and other light effects based on a close observation of nature. These works were modeled on sketches and studies of scenic spots, such as the cliffs on Rügen, the surroundings of Dresden and the river Elbe. He executed his studies almost exclusively in pencil, even providing topographical information, yet the subtle atmospheric effects characteristic of Friedrich's mid-period paintings were rendered from memory. These effects took their strength from the depiction of light, and of the illumination of sun and moon on clouds and water: optical phenomena peculiar to the Baltic coast that had never before been painted with such an emphasis.

Move to Dresden

Friedrich established his reputation as an artist when he won a prize in 1805 at the Weimar competition organised by the writer, poet, and dramatist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. At the time, the Weimar competition tended to draw mediocre and now long-forgotten artists presenting derivative mixtures of neo-classical and pseudo-Greek styles. The poor quality of the entries began to prove damaging to Goethe's reputation, so when Friedrich entered two sepia drawings—''Procession at Dawn'' and ''Fisher-Folk by the Sea''—the poet responded enthusiastically and wrote, "We must praise the artist's resourcefulness in this picture fairly. The drawing is well done, the procession is ingenious and appropriate... his treatment combines a great deal of firmness, diligence and neatness... the ingenious watercolour... is also worthy of praise."

Friedrich completed the first of his major paintings in 1807, at the age of 34. ''The Cross in the Mountains'', today known as the ''Tetschen Altar'' (Galerie Neue Meister, Dresden), is an altarpiece panel commissioned by the Countess of Thun for her family's chapel in Tetschen, Bohemia. It was to be one of the few commissions the artist received. The altar panel depicts the crucified Christ in profile at the top of a mountain, alone and surrounded by nature. The cross reaches the highest point in the pictorial plane but is presented from an oblique and a distant viewpoint, unusual for a crucifixion scene in Western art. Nature dominates the scene and for the first time in Christian art, an altarpiece showcases a landscape. According to the art historian Linda Siegel, the design of the altarpiece is the "logical climax of many earlier drawings of his which depicted a cross in nature's world."

The work was first exhibited on Christmas Day, 1808. Although it was generally coldly received, it was nevertheless Friedrich's first painting to receive wide publicity. The artist’s friends publicly defended the work, while art critic Basilius von Ramdohr published a lengthy article rejecting Friedrich's use of landscape in such a context; he wrote that it would be "a veritable presumption, if landscape painting were to sneak into the church and creep onto the altar". Ramdohr fundamentally challenged the concept that pure landscape painting could convey explicit meaning. Friedrich responded with a programme describing his intentions. In his 1809 commentary on the painting, he compared the rays of the evening sun to the light of the Holy Father. The sinking of the sun suggests that the era when God revealed himself directly to man has passed. This statement marked the only time Friedrich recorded a detailed interpretation of his own work.

Friedrich was elected a member of the Berlin Academy in 1810 following the purchase of two of his paintings by the Prussian Crown Prince. Yet in 1816, he sought to distance himself from Prussian authority, and that June applied for Saxon citizenship. The move was unexpected by his friends, as the Saxon government of the time was pro-French, while Friedrich's paintings to date were seen as generally patriotic and distinctly anti-French. Nevertheless, with the aid of his Dresden-based friend Graf Vitzthum von Eckstädt, Friedrich attained not only citizenship, but in 1818, a place in the Saxon Academy as a member with a yearly dividend of 150 thalers. Although he hoped to receive a full Professorship, it was never awarded him as, according to the German Library of Information, "it was felt that his painting was too personal, his point of view too individual to serve as a fruitful example to students." Politics too may have played a role in the stalling of his career: Friedrich’s decidedly Germanic choice of subject and costuming frequently clashed with the prevailing pro-French attitudes of the time.

Marriage

On January 21, 1818, Friedrich married Caroline Bommer, the twenty-five-year-old daughter of a dyer from Dresden. The couple had three children, with their first, Emma, arriving in 1820. Physiologist and painter Carl Gustav Carus notes in his biographical essays that marriage did not impact significantly on either Friedrich's life or personality, yet his canvasses from this period, including ''Chalk Cliffs on Rügen''—painted after his honeymoon—display a new sense of levity, while his palette is brighter and less austere. Human figures appear with increasing frequency in the paintings of this period, which Siegel interprets as a reflection that "the importance of human life, particularly his family, now occupies his thoughts more and more, and his friends, his wife, and his townspeople appear as frequent subjects in his art."

Around this time, the artist found support from two sources in Russia. In 1820, Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich, at the behest of his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, visited Friedrich's studio and returned to Saint Petersburg with a number of his paintings. The exchange marked the beginning of a patronage that continued for many years. Not long thereafter, the poet Vasily Zhukovsky, tutor to Alexander II, met Friedrich in 1821 and found in him a kindred spirit. For decades Zhukovsky helped Friedrich both by purchasing his work himself and by recommending his art to the royal family; his assistance toward the end of Friedrich’s career proved invaluable to the ailing and impoverished artist. Zhukovsky remarked that his friend's paintings "please us by their precision, each of them awakening a memory in our mind."

Friedrich was acquainted with Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1810), another leading German painter of the Romantic period. He was also a friend of Georg Friedrich Kersting (1785–1847), who painted him at work in his unadorned studio, and of the Norwegian painter Johann Christian Dahl (1788–1857). Dahl was close to Friedrich during the artist's final years, and he expressed dismay that to the art-buying public, Friedrich's pictures were only "curiosities". While the poet Zhukovsky appreciated Friedrich's psychological themes, Dahl praised the descriptive quality of Friedrich's landscapes, commenting that "artists and connoisseurs saw in Friedrich's art only a kind of mystic, because they themselves were only looking out for the mystic... They did not see Friedrich's faithful and conscientious study of nature in everything he represented".

During this period Friedrich frequently sketched memorial monuments and sculptures for mausoleums, reflecting his obsession with death and the afterlife; he even created designs for some of the funerary art in Dresden's cemeteries. Some of these works were lost in the fire that destroyed Munich's Glass Palace (1931) and later in the 1945 bombing of Dresden.

Later life and death

Friedrich's reputation steadily declined over the final fifteen years of his life. As the ideals of early Romanticism passed from fashion, he came to be viewed as an eccentric and melancholy character, out of touch with the times. Gradually his patrons fell away. By 1820, he was living as a recluse and was described by friends as the "most solitary of the solitary". Towards the end of his life he lived in relative poverty and was increasingly dependent on the charity of friends. He became isolated and spent long periods of the day and night walking alone through woods and fields, often beginning his strolls before sunrise.

In June 1835, Friedrich suffered his first stroke, which left him with minor limb paralysis and greatly reduced his ability to paint. As a result he was unable to work in oil; instead he was limited to watercolour, sepia and reworking older compositions. Although his vision remained strong, he had lost the full strength of his hand. Yet he was able to produce a final 'black painting', ''Seashore by Moonlight'' (1835–36), described by Vaughan as the "darkest of all his shorelines, in which richness of tonality compensates for the lack of his former finesse". Symbols of death appeared in his other work from this period. Soon after his stroke, the Russian royal family purchased a number of his earlier works, and the proceeds allowed him to travel to Teplitz—in today's Czech Republic—to recover.

During the mid-1830s, Friedrich began a series of portraits and he returned to observing himself in nature. As the art historian William Vaughan has observed, however, "He can see himself as a man greatly changed. He is no longer the upright, supportive figure that appeared in ''Two Men Contemplating the Moon'' in 1819. He is old and stiff... he moves with a stoop". By 1838, he was capable only of working in a small format. He and his family were living in poverty and grew increasingly dependent for support on the charity of friends.

When Friedrich died in May 1840, his passing was little noticed within the artistic community. By then, his reputation and fame were waning. His artwork had certainly been acknowledged during his lifetime, but not widely. While the close study of landscape and an emphasis on the spiritual elements of nature were commonplace in contemporary art, his work was too original and personal to be well understood. By 1838, his work no longer sold or received attention from critics; the Romantic movement had been moving away from the early idealism that the artist had helped found. After his death, Carl Gustav Carus wrote a series of articles which paid tribute to Friedrich's transformation of the conventions of landscape painting. However, Carus' articles placed Friedrich firmly in his time, and did not place the artist within a continuing tradition. Only one of his paintings had been reproduced as a print, and that was produced in very few copies.

Themes

Landscape and the sublime

The visualisation and portrayal of landscape in an entirely new manner was Friedrich's key innovation. He sought not just to explore the blissful enjoyment of a beautiful view, as in the classic conception, but rather to examine an instant of sublimity, a reunion with the spiritual self through the contemplation of nature. Friedrich was instrumental in transforming landscape in art from a backdrop subordinated to human drama to a self-contained emotive subject. Friedrich's paintings commonly employed the ''Rückenfigur''—a person seen from behind, contemplating the view. The viewer is encouraged to place himself in the position of the ''Rückenfigur'', by which means he experiences the sublime potential of nature, understanding that the scene is as perceived and idealised by a human. Friedrich created the notion of a landscape full of romantic feeling—''die romantische Stimmungslandschaft''. His art details a wide range of geographical features, such as rock coasts, forests, and mountain scenes. He often used the landscape to express religious themes. During his time, most of the best-known paintings were viewed as expressions of a religious mysticism.

Friedrich said, "The artist should paint not only what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also refrain from painting that which he sees before him. Otherwise, his pictures will be like those folding screens behind which one expects to find only the sick or the dead." Expansive skies, storms, mist, forests, ruins and crosses bearing witness to the presence of God are frequent elements in Friedrich's landscapes. Though death finds symbolic expression in boats that move away from shore—a Charon-like motif—and in the poplar tree, it is referenced more directly in paintings like ''The Abbey in the Oakwood'' (1808–10), in which monks carry a coffin past an open grave, toward a cross, and through the portal of a church in ruins.

He was one of the first artists to portray winter landscapes in which the land is rendered as stark and dead. Friedrich's winter scenes are solemn and still—according to the art historian Hermann Beenken, Friedrich painted winter scenes in which "no man has yet set his foot. The theme of nearly all the older winter pictures had been less winter itself than life in winter. In the 16th and 17th centuries, it was thought impossible to leave out such motifs as the crowd of skaters, the wanderer... It was Friedrich who first felt the wholly detached and distinctive features of a natural life. Instead of many tones, he sought the one; and so, in his landscape, he subordinated the composite chord into one single basic note".

Bare oak trees and tree stumps, such as those in ''Raven Tree'' (c. 1822), ''Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon'' (c. 1833), and ''Willow Bush under a Setting Sun'' (c. 1835), are recurring elements of Friedrich's paintings, symbolizing death. Countering the sense of despair are Friedrich's symbols for redemption: the cross and the clearing sky promise eternal life, and the slender moon suggests hope and the growing closeness of Christ. In his paintings of the sea, anchors often appear on the shore, also indicating a spiritual hope. German literature scholar Alice Kuzniar finds in Friedrich's painting a temporality—an evocation of the passage of time—that is rarely highlighted in the visual arts. For example, in ''The Abbey in the Oakwood'', the movement of the monks away from the open grave and toward the cross and the horizon imparts Friedrich's message that the final destination of man's life lies beyond the grave.

With dawn and dusk constituting prominent themes of his landscapes, Friedrich's own later years were characterized by a growing pessimism. His work becomes darker, revealing a fearsome monumentality. ''The Wreck of the Hope''—also known as ''The Polar Sea'' or ''The Sea of Ice'' (1823–24)—perhaps best summarizes Friedrich's ideas and aims at this point, though in such a radical way that the painting was not well received. Completed in 1824, it depicted a grim subject, a shipwreck in the Arctic Ocean; "the image he produced, with its grinding slabs of travertine-colored floe ice chewing up a wooden ship, goes beyond documentary into allegory: the frail bark of human aspiration crushed by the world's immense and glacial indifference."

Friedrich's written commentary on aesthetics was limited to a collection of aphorisms set down in 1830, in which he explained the need for the artist to match natural observation with an introspective scrutiny of his own personality. His best-known remark advises the artist to "close your bodily eye so that you may see your picture first with the spiritual eye. Then bring to the light of day that which you have seen in the darkness so that it may react upon others from the outside inwards." He rejected the overreaching portrayals of nature in its "totality", as found in the work of contemporary painters like Adrian Ludwig Richter (1803–84) and Joseph Anton Koch (1768–1839).

Loneliness and death

Both Friedrich's life and art are marked with an overwhelming sense of loneliness. This becomes more apparent in his later works, from a time when friends, members of his family and fellow pioneers of early romanticism began to either become distant from him or die.

Art historians and some of his contemporaries attribute the melancholy in his art to the losses suffered during his youth to the bleak outlook of his adulthood, while Friedrich's pale and withdrawn appearance helped reinforce the popular notion of the "taciturn man from the North".

Friedrich suffered depressive episodes in 1799, 1803–1805, c.1813, in 1816 and between 1824 and 1826. There are noticeable thematic shifts in the works he produced during these episodes, which see the emergence of such motifs and death symbols as vultures, owls, graveyards and ruins. From 1826 these motifs became a permanent feature of his output, while his use of color became more dark and muted. Carus wrote in 1929 that Friedrich "is surrounded by a thick, gloomy cloud of spiritual uncertainty", while in 2004 the psychiatrist Carsten Spitzer wrote that he believed during his life, Friedrich suffered prolonged inertia, a suicide attempt and what the artist himself described as a "dreadful weariness".

Germanic folklore

Reflecting Friedrich's patriotism and resentment during the 1813 French occupation of the dominion of Pomerania, motifs from German folklore became increasingly prominent in his work. An anti-French German nationalist, Friedrich used motifs from his native landscape to celebrate Germanic culture, customs and mythology. He was impressed by the anti-Napoleonic poetry of Ernst Moritz Arndt and Theodor Körner, and the patriotic literature of Adam Müller and Heinrich von Kleist. Moved by the deaths of three friends killed in battle against France, as well as by Kleist's 1808 drama ''Die Hermannsschlacht'', Friedrich undertook a number of paintings in which he intended to convey political symbols solely by means of the landscape—a first in the history of art.

In ''Old Heroes' Graves'' (1812), a dilapidated monument inscribed "Arminius" invokes the Germanic chieftain, a symbol of nationalism, while the four tombs of fallen heroes are slightly ajar, freeing their spirits for eternity. Two French soldiers appear as small figures before a cave, lower and deep in a grotto surrounded by rock, as if farther from heaven. A second political painting, ''Fir Forest with the French Dragoon and the Raven'' (c. 1813), depicts a lost French soldier dwarfed by a dense forest, while on a tree stump a raven is perched—a prophet of doom, symbolizing the anticipated defeat of France.

Legacy

Influence

Alongside other Romantic painters, Friedrich helped position landscape painting as a major genre within Western art. Of his contemporaries, Friedrich's style most influenced the painting of Johan Christian Dahl (1788–1857). Among later generations, Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901) was strongly influenced by his work, and the substantial presence of Friedrich's works in Russian collections influenced many Russian painters, in particular Arkhip Kuindzhi (c. 1842–1910) and Ivan Shishkin (1832–98). Friedrich's spirituality anticipated American painters such as Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847–1917), Ralph Blakelock (1847–1919), the painters of the Hudson River School and the New England Luminists.

At the turn of the 20th century Friedrich was rediscovered by the Norwegian art historian Andreas Aubert (1851–1913), whose writing initiated modern Friedrich scholarship, and by the Symbolist painters, who valued his visionary and allegorical landscapes. The Norwegian Symbolist Edvard Munch (1863–1944) would have seen Friedrich's work during a visit to Berlin in the 1880s. Munch's 1899 print ''The Lonely Ones'' echoes Friedrich's ''Rückenfigur (back figure)'', although in Munch's work the focus has shifted away from the broad landscape and toward the sense of dislocation between the two melancholy figures in the foreground.

Friedrich's landscapes exercised a strong influence on the work of German artist Max Ernst (1891–1976), and as a result other Surrealists came to view Friedrich as a precursor to their movement. In 1934, the Belgian painter René Magritte (1898–1967) paid tribute in his work ''The Human Condition'', which directly echoes motifs from Friedrich's art in its questioning of perception and the role of the viewer. A few years later, the Surrealist journal ''Minotaure'' featured Friedrich in a 1939 article by critic Marie Landsberger, thereby exposing his work to a far wider circle of artists. The influence of ''The Wreck of Hope'' (or ''The Sea of Ice'') is evident in the 1940–41 painting ''Totes Meer'' by Paul Nash (1889–1946), a fervent admirer of Ernst. Friedrich's work has been cited as an inspiration by other major 20th-century artists, including Mark Rothko (1903–70), Gotthard Graubner (b. 1930), Gerhard Richter (b. 1932), HA Schult (b. 1939) and Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945), and has been singled out by writer Samuel Beckett (1906–89), who, standing before ''Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon'', said "This was the source of ''Waiting for Godot'', you know."

In his 1961 article "The Abstract Sublime", originally published in ARTnews, the art historian Robert Rosenblum drew comparisons between the Romantic landscape paintings of both Friedrich and Turner with the Abstract Expressionist paintings of Mark Rothko. Rosenblum specifically describes Friedrich's 1809 painting ''The Monk by the Sea'', Turner's ''The Evening Star'' and Rothko's 1954 ''Light, Earth and Blue'' as revealing affinities of vision and feeling. According to Rosenblum, "Rothko, like Friedrich and Turner, places us on the threshold of those shapeless infinities discussed by the aestheticians of the Sublime. The tiny monk in the Friedrich and the fisher in the Turner establish a poignant contrast between the infinite vastness of a pantheistic God and the infinite smallness of His creatures. In the abstract language of Rothko, such literal detail—a bridge of empathy between the real spectator and the presentation of a transcendental landscape—is no longer necessary; we ourselves are the monk before the sea, standing silently and contemplatively before these huge and soundless pictures as if we were looking at a sunset or a moonlit night."

Critical opinion

Until 1890, and especially after his friends had died, Friedrich's work lay in near-oblivion for decades. Yet, by 1890, the symbolism in his work began to ring true with the artistic mood of the day, especially in central Europe. However, despite a renewed interest and an acknowledgment of his originality, his lack of regard for "painterly effect" and thinly rendered surfaces jarred with the theories of the time.

During the 1930s, Friedrich's work was used in the promotion of Nazi ideology, which attempted to fit the Romantic artist within the nationalistic ''Blut und Boden''. It took decades for Friedrich's reputation to recover from this association with Nazism. His reliance on symbolism and the fact that his work fell outside the narrow definitions of modernism contributed to his fall from favour. In 1949, art historian Kenneth Clark wrote that Friedrich "worked in the frigid technique of his time, which could hardly inspire a school of modern painting", and suggested that the artist was trying to express in painting what is best left to poetry. Clark's dismissal of Friedrich reflected the damage the artist's reputation sustained during the late 1930s.

Friedrich's reputation suffered further damage when his imagery was adopted by a number of Hollywood directors, such as Walt Disney, built on the work of such German cinema masters as Fritz Lang and F. W. Murnau, within the horror and fantasy genres. His rehabilitation was slow, but enhanced through the writings of such critics and scholars as Werner Hofmann, Helmut Börsch-Supan and Sigrid Hinz, who successfully rejected and rebutted the political associations ascribed to his work, and placed it within a purely art-historical context. By the 1970s, he was again being exhibited in major galleries across the world, as he found favour with a new generation of critics and art historians.

Today, his international reputation is well established. He is a national icon in his native Germany, and highly regarded by art historians and art connoisseurs across the Western World. He is generally viewed as a figure of great psychological complexity, and according to Vaughan, "a believer who struggled with doubt, a celebrator of beauty haunted by darkness. In the end, he transcends interpretation, reaching across cultures through the compelling appeal of his imagery. He has truly emerged as a butterfly—hopefully one that will never again disappear from our sight".

Work

Friedrich was a prolific artist who produced more than 500 attributed works. In line with the Romantic ideals of his time, he intended his paintings to function as pure aesthetic statements, so he was cautious that the titles given to his work were not overly descriptive or evocative. It is likely that some of today's more literal titles, such as "The Stages of Life", were not given by the artist himself, but were instead adopted during one of the revivals of interest in Friedrich. Complications arise when dating Friedrich's work, in part because he often did not directly name or date his canvases. He kept a carefully detailed notebook on his output, however, which has been used by scholars to tie paintings to their completion dates.

File:Caspar_David_Friedrich_-_Mondaufgang_am_Meer_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg|''Moonrise Over the Sea'' (1822). 55 × 71 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. During the early 1820s, human figures appear with increasing frequency in the paintings. Of this period, Linda Siegel writes, "the importance of human life, particularly his family, now occupies his thoughts more and more, and his friends appear as frequent subjects in his art."

Image:Caspar David Friedrich 052.jpg|''Graveyard under Snow'' (1826). 31 × 25 cm. Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig. Friedrich sketched memorial monuments and sculptures for mausoleums, reflecting his obsession with death and the afterlife. He also created some of the funerary art in Dresden's cemeteries.

Image:Oak Tree in the Snow.jpg|''The Oak Tree in the Snow'' (1829). 71 × 48 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Friedrich was one of the first artists to portray winter landscapes as stark and dead. His winter scenes are solemn and still—according to the art historian Hermann Beenken, Friedrich painted winter scenes in which "no man has yet set his foot".

Image:Caspar David Friedrich 013.jpg|''The Stages of Life'' (''Die Lebensstufen'' (1835). Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig. ''The Stages of Life'' is a meditation on the artist's own mortality, depicting five ships at various distances from the shore. The foreground similarly shows five figures at different stages of life.

Image:Caspar David Friedrich 016.jpg|''The Giant Mountains'' (1830–35). 72 × 102 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Friedrich sought not just to explore the blissful enjoyment of a beautiful view, as in the classic conception, but rather to examine an instant of sublimity, a reunion with the spiritual self through the contemplation of nature.

Image:Caspar David Friedrich 073.jpg|''Seashore by Moonlight'' (1835–36). 134 × 169 cm. Kunsthalle, Hamburg. His final "black painting", ''Seashore by Moonlight'', is described by William Vaughan as the "darkest of all his shorelines."

Citations

Bibliography

(essays)

External links

Caspar David Friedrich Foundation

Hermitage Museum Archive

CasparDavidFriedrich.org – 89 paintings by Caspar David Friedrich

Biographical timeline, Hamburg Kunsthalle

Caspar David Friedrich and the German romantic landscape

Category:German romantic painters Category:Landscape painters Category:1774 births Category:1840 deaths Category:People from Greifswald Category:German Lutherans Category:Landscape artists Category:People from Swedish Pomerania Category:University of Greifswald alumni Category:18th-century German people Category:19th-century German people Category:Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts alumni

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