About the Author
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was a towering figure in European culture, a living monument to whom countless other writers and intellectuals made pilgrimages. Author of literary masterpieces such as the drama Faust (1803 and 1832), the Roman Elegies (1795), and the novels Elective Affinities (1809) and Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795), Goethe was also a scientist who produced an influential color theory in response to Newton and did important work in the fields of geology, botany, and anatomy; an able statesman and administrator at the court of Weimar; and a theorist and collector of art.
