ABSTRACT
The writing of Wilhelm Meister accompanied Goethe throughout his life, comparable to the Walpurgisnacht Faust. From Meister, just as from Poetry and Truth, it is clear that Goethe's childhood obsession with theatre and the adolescent urge to escape home got a youthful reinforcement through the writings of Lessing. The story of the puppet theatre Goethe received from her grandmother as a Christmas gift when he was four is not only told in both versions, and identically to the autobiographical Poetry and Truth, but it is outright contained in the first sentences of the original version. It clearly offers a key not only to Wilhelm's one-time theatrical mission but is central to Goethe's self-overcoming, even his vision of the world. The theatrical mission proposed and problematised in the Meister novels is Goethe's effort to handle the decisive influence Lessing had on his life work, and which he over the time found increasingly burdensome.
