ABSTRACT
‘My life is like a sleigh-ride, quickly away with bells jingling, and parading up and down’, writes Goethe shortly after his arrival in Weimar. The whole first winter is a carnival. Goethe has brought his skates, the kind recommended by Klopstock, and teaches the new sport to members of the Court. The Duke is enthusiastic, as he is about all physical exercise. There are dances, masked balls and other kinds of gaiety - the ‘gay time in Weimar’ it was called later. The gaiety is short lived; soon the little town will become gloomy and ill-humoured again. But to begin with the people are cheerful, or rather one faction is cheerful, that of the young Karl August and his favourite. The other faction, that of the older officials and older residents in general, views these activities with sullen, anxious eyes. Have they not been told to save? Is not the country in debt? Did not the wedding and the Duke’s assumption of government involve them in exceptional and painful expenditure, and in special taxes? And now at Court money is being frittered away, taken from empty coffers, borrowed, given away to foreigners and outsiders who will soon move on elsewhere. Is the young Duke sitting at his desk and acquiring some knowledge and insight into the plight of his land? He is doing nothing of the kind. He is fooling about with his friends, these young men who call themselves geniuses, he is off hunting, play acting, sleigh-riding or dancing with the village girls. One of these days he is going to break his neck, galloping round at full tilt the way he does; he is not a very good horseman anyway, and he has fallen off three times already. Is he leading a well-conducted married life with his young wife? Far from it, everyone knows that things are not well between them. There is no prospect even of an heir. The country will be annexed by Gotha, or Meiningen, or Coburg, a menace that has often threatened. Officials will lose their posts, or be paid even less than they are now, and that is little enough.
