ABSTRACT
It is as an artist in the full sense of the word that Goethe returns from Italy. After an interval of ten years he now begins to appear before the public as an author again. He has almost been given up as lost to writing, although his early works are still read and publishers still continue their reprints and pirated editions. No fewer than seven different pirated editions of his Collected Works, all in three or more volumes, have been published during these years, in Switzerland, Berlin, Amsterdam, his home town of Frankfurt and Reutlingen. One pirate pirated the others. The most popular edition was that of the Berlin pirate, Himburg, with charming engravings by the favourite illustrator Chodowiecki. Criticized from various quarters because of this continued piracy, he even offered Goethe a small compensation: a service of Royal Berlin porcelain for his table. This factory, later to become so famous, had great difficulty in marketing its wares, and Frederick the Great had decreed that every Jew, on contracting a marriage for his child, had to buy a service as a special levy. Thus it was that later generations of the old Jewish families of Berlin had collections of the most beautiful ‘Old Berlin’, until in course of time they saw it destroyed in the new Berlin. Goethe declined the impertinent offer. The piracy continued.
