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Goetz von Berlichingen
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The Sorrows of Werther
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Hermann und Dorothea
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Dichtung und Wahrheit. In 1772 he returned to Frankfort and practiced law. While thus engaged he wrote his first romantic-historical play,
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Goetz von Berlichingen. In the following year he published his sentimental romance,
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The Sorrows of Werther, based in a measure on one of his own unfortunate love affairs at Wetzlar. Both of these early works achieved instant success.
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The Sorrows of Werther inaugurated in German literature what is known as the period of storm and stress. Disenchantment of life, or
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Weltschmerz, became a fashionable malady. The romantic suicide of Goethe's sentimental hero Werther was aped by a number of over-susceptible young persons. Wieland drew the attention of the Duke of Weimar to Goethe, and the young poet was invited to Weimar. He remained under the patronage of this enlightened prince until the end of his days. At Weimar, Goethe was the centre of a court comprising some of the foremost spirits of Germany. The little capital became a Mecca for poets, scholars, artists and musicians from all over the world. Goethe's only rival poet in Germany, Schiller, was drawn into the circle and the two became life-long friends. Most of Goethe's lyric poems were written during the first ten years at Weimar. At the outbreak of the French Revolution he accompanied the Duke of Weimar in one of the campaigns against France. The thrilling atmosphere of the Revolution furnished him with a literary background for his epic idyl,
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Hermann und Dorothea. Goethe's subsequent journey to Italy, which was a turning-point in the poet's career, was commemorated in his
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Letters from Italy --a classic among German books of travel. Another eminently successful creation was the epic of
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Reynard, the Fox,