Christine and Goethe

Author: Sigrid Damm
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2003-01-01
Features: "This is a meticulously crafted, captivating, and well-documented book. Many legends are thus unveiled. The young woman who became the lover of Chancellor Goethe after his return from Italy was incredibly brave, tactful, and never prone to extreme emotions." On October 19, 1806, when 41-year-old Christiane Vulpius married 57-year-old Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in the vestry of St. Jacob's church in Weimar, they had been living together for 18 years. Christiane had five illegitimate children, only the eldest son, August, survived. In 1801, Goethe acknowledged August as his legitimate child. Christiane passed away relatively early. After her death on June 6, 1816, Goethe never made any remarks about their 28 years of shared life. In this book, Sigrid attempts to explore who Christiane Vulpius really was when she married Goethe, and what significance she held as his companion. After dedicating substantial effort to tracing clues and discovering astonishing evidence in personal belongings, church registers, and official documents, Sigrid paints a vivid portrait of Christiane, narrating her birth and childhood, her life in Weimar at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, and the years she spent with Goethe. The stories presented are all fact-based.