Johann Wolfgang Goethe

From Metapedia

Johann Wolfgang Goethe (August 28, 1749 – March 22, 1832) was a German writer. Goethe's works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, humanism, science and painting. Goethe's magnum opus, lauded as one of the peaks of world literature, is the two-part dramatic poem Faust. Goethe's other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Goethe was one of the key figures of German literature and the movement of Weimar Classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; this movement coincides with Enlightenment, Sentimentality ("Empfindsamkeit"), Sturm und Drang, and Romanticism. The author of the scientific text Theory of Colours, he influenced Darwin with his focus on plant morphology. Goethe's influence spread across Europe, and for the next century his works were a primary source of inspiration in music, drama, poetry and philosophy.