37. General Assembly of the Goethe Society

This year's General Assembly of the Goethe Society on May 8, 1891 was a particularly solemn one, as it took place in the middle of the festive week dedicated to the commemoration of that momentous moment in German art when the Weimar Court Theatre was opened under Goethe's direction one hundred years ago. The connection between the two celebrations also found special expression in the fact that Prof. Suphan, the director of the Goethe Archive, was able to report on an important discovery of documents relating to Goethe's management of the theater. The meeting was extremely well attended. Their Royal Highnesses, the Grand Duke, the Grand Duchess, the Hereditary Grand Duke and the Hereditary Grand Duchess as well as the Princesses Auguste and Olga of Saxe-Weimar honored the meeting with their visit. The following foreign guests were present: Minister von Goßler, Privy Councillor von Loeper, Wildenbruch, Bodenstedt, Spielhagen, Julius Wolff, W. Freiherr von Biedermann, Privy Councillor Freiherr von Bezecny, Lud. Aug. von Frankl, Erich Schmidt, Jul. Rodenberg and many others. The meeting was chaired by Privy Councillor von Loeper, who welcomed the society and expressed his regret that President von Simson was unable to attend due to health reasons. Privy Councillor Dr. Ruland then presented the annual report, which showed that the number of members on December 31, 1890 was 2988; the Society's assets on that day amounted to 37,289 marks, of which 21,396 marks served as a reserve fund. As a Christmas gift for the members of the Goethe Society, a publication on Goethe's relationship to the Weimar theater was promised on the basis of the above-mentioned discovery of files by Dr. C. A. H. Burkhardt and Dr. Julius Wahle. Prof. Dr. Valentin from Frankfurt a.M. gave the keynote speech "On the classical Walpurgis Night". The lecturer endeavored to refute those views that want to see contradictions everywhere in Goethe's "Faust" and deficiencies in its unified composition. Despite some gaps and unevenness in the progression of the plot, "Faust" is a consistent, unified poem. It is the counterpart to Wilhelm Meister. But while in the latter work the poet allows his hero to find the goal of his striving in the real world, he places such a powerful urge for human perfection in Faust's soul that it becomes impossible to grant it satisfaction in this finite world. Faust's striving is for something infinite and eternal. But one that not only represents the sum of all that is finite, but goes into the depths of all being. Mephistopheles cannot understand the latter. He only knows the former infinity. Therefore he leads Faust from pleasure to pleasure. But what Faust seeks, he cannot grant him. This is why the role of Mephistopheles changes in the course of the play. From Faust's guide, which he was in the first part, he becomes in the second part the henchman who procures the external means for Faust's higher purposes, the latter of which he no longer even suspects. He gives Faust the key to the Mothers' apartments, but remains completely unaware of his fate in this spirit realm. In Mephistopheles' "Nothing", Faust finds the symbol of all beauty, Helena, and brings her to the upper world, but initially only as a dream image, as a shadow. She needs to be embodied, to exist in the flesh. This can only be achieved if a germ of humanity is produced from the forces of nature that is capable of cloaking the shadow of beauty with real life. This is the homunculus. It becomes Faust's guide into classical antiquity, where it dissolves in order to continue to act as the force that forms Helena's body from the elements of nature around her spirit. Thus Faust is in possession of this only one of the women; but he still cannot be satisfied, for no finite thing, whether it is in the past or the present, can satisfy him. Only when he wants to banish all magic from his path through life, when he renounces all finite, selfish pleasure and lives only in the anticipation of a happiness that he has created but no longer enjoys, does he reach that supreme moment when he wants to say: "Linger on, you are so beautiful". Faust's soul is lost to Mephistopheles, who believed he could hold on to it in his final enjoyment.

This keynote speech was followed by Prof. Suphan's presentation of the files he had found. These represent a large part of the old theater archive. They were found in a barely accessible corner of the part of the palace known in Weimar as the "Bastille" and were donated to the Goethe and Schiller Archive by His Royal Highness the Grand Duke on December 24, 1890. There are seventy-eight volumes and fascicles. One part consists of the so-called DirektionsAkten, i.e. those documents from the management of the Court Theater Commission set up in 1797. This commission consisted of Goethe, von Luck and Kirms, later Goethe, Kirms and Rat Kruse. The second part consists of the files of the branch theaters where the members of the Weimar theater performed during the summer season. 35 of the volumes in this section relate to the Lauchstadt theater and are from the years 1791 to 1814. This series contains the documents relating to the famous Leipzig guest performance of 1807. Three volumes concern the theater in Halle since 1811, seven Erfurt (1791-95 and 1815), ten Rudolstadt (1794-1805), one Jena, three Naumburg. Goethe dictated and reviewed a large number of these plays. A manuscript of the prelude "Was wir bringen" (from the hand of the scribe Geist) is among the files, as well as 44 letters from Goethe to Kirms and 34 to other people. In addition to purely business matters, the former also deal with matters of literary and artistic interest. The collection also includes letters from Schiller, such as one in which he expresses his approval of the Wallenstein performance in Lauchstädt. Karl August's relationship to the theater is evident from many of the documents. Of particular importance are those sheets that show the care with which Goethe managed the theater and how nothing was too small for him to concern himself with it.¹

After these announcements, Prof. Suphan gave a special report on the Goethe Archive and the Goethe Library. With regard to the former, it was emphasized that Goethe's natural science estate had also recently been viewed and processed for the edition. The work of Prof. Bardeleben from Jena and the writer of these lines has progressed so far that readers of the Weimar Goethe edition will probably be able to see a larger part of the discovered estate in the course of this year. It will make a significant contribution to finally making Goethe's pioneering work in the scientific field clear to even the greatest doubters. Goethe tackled morphology in such a way that he has not yet been caught up with by specialist science; in the field of osteology, there are works on the skull of mammals and the shape of animals, which introduce a method into anatomy that was only recognized as the correct one decades later by Merkel and others.

The library was augmented by purchases of valuable items, particularly of older literature, and by numerous donations. The Grand Duke donated 106 letters by Wieland to the archive, which was significantly enriched by the acquisition of Otto Ludwig's manuscript estate, which is being edited by Erich Schmidt.

Geheimrat Hofrat Ruland now presented the report on the Goethe National Museum. The museum is continuing to organize its collections, in particular Goethe's library.

The General Assembly was followed by a communal lunch, during which Minister Groß made toasts to the Emperor, Privy Councillor von Loeper to the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess, Erich Schmidt to the Weimar Theater and Minister von Gossler to the Goethe Society. Ludw. Aug. von Frankl brought a festive greeting from Vienna. The festival concluded with a performance of Paul Heyse's new play "Die schlimmen Brüder" in the court theater.