ABSTRACT
Seen in retrospect Goethe’s flight from Frankfurt and his journey to Weimar have often been regarded as a particularly significant step in his endeavour to mould his life as a ‘work of art’. He himself, at the time, gives a much simpler explanation, ascribing it to chance. The young prince and heir to the little Thuringian Duchy of Weimar, having been attracted by the young man during their short meetings, invites Goethe to visit him. People in the most varied places and positions have now become aware of Goethe. The Prince of another of these Thuringian Duchies, that of Meiningen, also met him in Frankfurt, and the author of Wert her made a very good impression: ‘he talks a lot, and his talk is good, striking, original, ingenuous, and it is astonishingly amusing and gay. He is tall and well built... and has his own very individual way of behaving, just as in general he belongs to a quite special type of human being. He has his own ideas and opinions about everything. For people, and he understands them, he has his own language, his own expressions.’ On their cultural tours young heirs to these princedoms were expected to cast their eyes round for useful people. Such men were greatly in demand, and if they had original ideas, this was no drawback. Reform and innovation were in the air, and even these princes read their Rousseau and the encyclopaedists. They knew something of mercantilism, of Turgot and his physiocratic system, which the Margrave of Baden was trying to introduce in some of his possessions. They were all poor, with small impoverished territories in which there was pressing need for improvement. They all had loyal subjects and native born officials of limited ability in whom they had little faith. They preferred to recruit their officials from outside, as did the great Courts as well. In Prussia a very high proportion of the leading posts was held by Frenchmen, Italians, Scotsmen, or Germans from everywhere else but Prussia. If someone ‘with brains’ was also good-looking, a point on which they set great store, and was gay and amusing and a social asset, so much the better. It was a time of great opportunity for young men of the calibre of Goethe.
