ABSTRACT
The next nine months of Goethe’s life in Frankfurt are bathed in a strange twilight. And, he tells us, he has returned home ill and in good spirits at the same time. Letting himself slide completely, he hands himself over to the care of his sister and his mother. He is angered by the impatience of his father, who wants to see the ‘weakling’ quickly back at the University again and has no time for hypochondriac complaints. Under these circumstances the boy finds his illness a welcome protection, and he exploits it to the full. Medical research has failed to establish a clear picture of the nature of the illness, and Goethe’s own statements, which are the only ones we have to go on, are themselves far from clear. He always complained a great deal about his health, about his teeth, a lifelong source of trouble for which there was no remedy in those days, about coughing and indigestion, which later were responsible for some of his serious crises. On the other hand he lived to a great age, was constantly described as a ‘radiant Apollo’ and, latterly, as a ‘magnificent old man’, the prototype of a near-immortal. Without any doubt there was a serious hypochondriac strain in him, and the word heiter, serene and cheerful, of which he was so fond, was first and foremost, an appeal to the gods.
