Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Goethe arrived in Weimar in 1775 on the strength of The Sorrows of Young Werther, his first novel, and never left. He took up posts in the Duke's privy council, sat on war and highway commissions, oversaw silver mines, reformed the University of Jena, and ran the court theatre while writing across genres and disciplines. A 1788 tour of Italy produced his Metamorphosis of Plants; a friendship with Friedrich Schiller beginning in 1794 anchored Weimar Classicism and saw him publish Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and, in 1808, the first part of Faust. Schopenhauer later named Wilhelm Meister one of the four greatest novels ever written; Emerson placed Goethe alongside Plato, Montaigne, Napoleon, and Shakespeare as a representative man. Composers from Mozart to Mahler set his poems to music, and his conversations, recorded by Johann Peter Eckermann, became a biographical cornerstone.