ABSTRACT
On one of their excursions Goethe is introduced by his companion, Weyland, to relatives in Sesenheim, a pleasant, prosperous village about a day’s journey from Strasbourg. Weyland has described the household as very hospitable and friendly: the father is pastor in the village, the mother a kind woman who must once have been very pretty, as the daughters still are. The house is always full of cousins, nieces and other relations. It is not a stiff parsonage, very far from it, and they dance, play forfeits, tease one another, make love, dress up, sit together in the arbour or go for long walks through the woods and down to the river. The parents are very broad-minded and they keep a generous table. Indulging his passion for mystification, Goethe arrives disguised as a poor theological student. To the end of his life he presents this ‘Sesenheim idyll’ to his readers in countless disguises and games of hide-and-seek.
