Out of this extraordinary personal presence; out of his overwhelming, almost threatening, literary stature; and out of the rejection of his political position in the turbulence of nineteenth- century German politics, a tradition developed that Goethe's greatness lay in his wisdom rather than in his literary achievement. Nevertheless, the continuing fascination with his works, especially with Faust (1808, 1832; translated, 1823, 1838), confirms his position as one of the most important writers of the European tradition.
Most of the available information about Goethe's earliest years comes from his autobiography, Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit (From my Life: Poetry and Truth, 1811-1813; translated as Memoirs of Goethe: Written by Himself, 1824). Written when the poet was in his sixties, long after he was established as the great man of German letters, the work must be recognized as Goethe's deliberately chosen image of himself for posterity. Goethe was born into the Frankfurt patriciate in 1749. His mother, Katharina Elisabeth Textor Goethe, was the daughter of the mayor; his father, Johann Caspar Goethe, was a leisured private citizen who devoted his energies to writing memoirs of his Italian journey (in Italian), patronizing local artists, and, above all, educating his two surviving children, the future poet and his sister, Cornelia.
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