Educating the Genius

If you had been loitering in the quiet streets of Carlsbad in the wee hours of Sunday morning, the third of September 1786, you might have seen the Duke of Saxe-Weimar’s favorite Privy Councillor furtively carrying his bags toward a waiting mail coach.  Carlsbad was a popular spa town in western Bohemia, and he’d just celebrated his thirty-seventh birthday there with a group of friends from Weimar.  Now he was slipping away unobserved.

He was not embarking on a secret mission for Duke Carl August; he was embarking on a secret mission for himself.  He had a number of problems to resolve:  he was famous, having written a popular and somewhat scandalous novel, and wanted to escape his notoriety; he was tired of the bureaucratic routine of his official duties; and his passionate but platonic relationship with a married woman in Weimar was embarrassing and frustrating.  He owed his publisher several unfinished works, and he was already spending the advance.  In short, he was a man who needed to get away from it all.

So, the day before he crept out of Carlsbad, he sent two letters: one, to his unattainable lady, telling her he was taking a short trip; and the other to the Duke, asking for an indefinite leave of absence.  Then, under an assumed name, Jean Philippe Möller, he bumped along by stagecoach and horseback, through Bohemia, Bavaria and Austria, over the Brenner Pass, and into Italy.  Or at least into the Italian peninsula – Italian unification was far in the future. At Malcesine, on the eastern shore of Lake Garda, he unwisely sketched an ancient tower, and was mistaken for an Austrian spy (the area was a possession of the Republic of Venice); but he managed to convince the podestà he was merely recording the beauty of the town.

Stopping in places like Verona, where he admired the Arena, and Vicenza, where he communed with the spirit of Palladio, Herr Möller eventually reached Venice on September 28th.  He had never before seen the sea, and spent an afternoon collecting shells on the Lido beach.

He stayed in rooms near Piazza San Marco, writing, but taking time to attend the theatre, the ballet, and the opera.  After enjoying the evocative atmosphere and iridescent light of Venice for several weeks, he set out for Rome, by way of Ferrara and Bologna, with a stop in Assisi, where he ignored the Basilica of St. Francis, with its masterpieces by Giotto and others, in favor of an ancient Roman porch with columns – the remnants of a temple to Minerva.  On October 29th, he finally reached Rome, entering the city through the Porta del Popolo, the gate through which most travelers got their first glimpse of Rome: the great square of the people, with its obelisk, twin churches, and three streets radiating out into the city.

After a night in an inn, he contacted J.H.W. Tischbein, a painter originally from the town of Haina, in Hesse.  Tischbein had been living in Rome since 1783, sharing spacious accommodations with two other Germans.  He and Herr Möller, who admired his work, had corresponded, though they’d never met.  Tischbein’s stay in Rome was partially financed by a grant Möller had arranged, so the artist knew quite well Möller’s true identity.

Tischbein’s rooms were on the Corso, just a few hundred yards from the Piazza del Popolo.  He invited Herr Möller to rent a room in the house, whose occupants, besides Tischbein, were J.G. Schütz and Friedrich Bury, both artists.  They were part of a small colony of German artists living in Rome at that time.

For a time, the truant councillor maintained his incognito in Rome, except with his housemates.  When he registered with the Roman authorities, it was under his assumed name; and he gave his occupation as pittore, a painter.  He also gave his age as thirty-two.  So he shed a few years and gained a brand-new profession. But there were people in Weimar with whom he had to re-establish contact, including his untouchable muse, Charlotte von Stein, as well as various friends, and of course the Duke.

So it was that the author of Werther and Götz von Berlichingen, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who would later be hailed as the greatest German poet and playwright of all time, wrote to his trusted servant back in Weimar that his friends should address their letters to “Sigr. Tischbein, Pittore Tedesco, al Corso, incontro del Palazzo Rondanini, Roma”.

So, today, if you are loitering – or, I should say, joining the perpetual passeggiata – along Via del Corso in Rome, and you spot number 18, just down the street from Piazza del Popolo, you can knock on Goethe’s door.  Actually, if it’s before six o’clock in the evening (except on Monday), you can walk right in.  For this is the entrance to the Casa di Goethe, the “only German museum not on German soil”.  (Or, at least, the only museum financed by the German government outside Germany.)  You may notice a marble plaque high on the facade, to the right of the door, given by the city of Rome in 1872: “In this house he dreamed and wrote immortal things”.  And here you can walk through the very rooms where Goethe lived with his artist friends from 1786 to 1788.

The house itself is redolent of history, all chronicled in a fascinating little book by the museum’s director, Dorothee Hock.  Its title translates as “Via del Corso 18 – the Story of an Address”. It is in Italian, but the author is German (married to an Italian), and speaks fluent English as well, so perhaps there will be a translation into one or both languages in time.

The house was already old when Goethe arrived; it was built in the late 16th century, and it was occupied, both before and after Goethe’s stay, by other notable people.  The family of the sculptor Pietro Bracci, who carved the figure of Neptune for the Trevi fountain, owned the building at one time.  During World War II, a courageous concierge, Autorina Molinari, protected the identity of a Jewish family who lived there and was later honored by the State of Israel.  Paul Heyse, the first German writer to win a Nobel prize (in 1910), was a resident as well. 

It was here that Goethe, the precocious author and disillusioned civil administrator, found the freedom to pursue his interest in Greek and Roman antiquity, acquired, perhaps, from his father, who had traveled in Italy; who had, in fact, authored a work called Viaggio in Italia, an account of his travels.  Goethe, too, wrote an account of his Italian sojourn, many years after he returned to Weimar, and he called it Italienische Reise – Italian Journey. He wrote of Rome:  “All the dreams of my youth have come alive … my father hung views of Rome in the hall.  Now I see them in reality.”

In Rome, in the house on Via del Corso, he found the leisure to finish the works he owed his publisher.  Perhaps more importantly, he found a chance to share in the carefree lives of his artist friends, who were all younger than he was – Tischbein, at 28, was the oldest of the three painters.  Tischbein made several delightful sketches of Goethe at home:  leaning out of a window, observing the life in the street below, one slipper dangling from his foot; sprawled on a sofa with his legs over the back; and leaning over the bed in his room, arranging a second pillow.  Goethe is discreet in his journal entries, so the implication of the second pillow remains unexplained.

Nevertheless, he took seriously his self-imposed tasks of learning about both antiquity and the works of Renaissance masters, as well as his literary tasks; and he was careful to stress the gravity of his purpose in his letters home, particularly to the Duke, who continued to pay him his official stipend.  This was not entirely out of kindness (although the Duke was fond of Goethe), but because Goethe’s literary fame lent great luster to the Ducal court at Weimar.

Although Goethe’s eloquently expressed love and admiration for Italy was undoubtedly genuine, his friends and acquaintances there remained almost exclusively members of the German and Northern European community in Rome. 

The Swiss painter Angelika Kauffman became a close friend, and she painted his portrait. It hangs in the museum.  There is also a copy of the most famous portrait of Goethe, Tischbein’s large oil of “Goethe in the Campagna”, with the poet half-reclining on a large stone, wearing a flowing white cape and a wide-brimmed grey hat.  His figure dominates the composition, though classical ruins can be seen in the distance.  This is the iconic image of Goethe, painted (or at least sketched) while he and Tischbein were traveling to Naples. (Goethe spent six months in Naples and Sicily before returning to Rome – without Tischbein, who stayed in Naples to advance his career.)  In Naples, Goethe visited the British Ambassador, Sir William Hamilton, and admired the old man’s beautiful 20 year-old mistress, Emma Hart.  She eventually married Sir William, and later became notorious (“That Hamilton Woman!”) as Admiral Horatio Nelson’s lover.

Back in Rome, Goethe returned to the house on the Corso, where another artist joined the group.  Bills from the landlord, recently discovered, indicate that Goethe paid the costs of board and lodging for all the tenants.  And he found, it seems, an agreeable young woman who made his final few months in Rome memorable.  She was the inspiration for Faustina in his Roman Elegies.

At last he was summoned back to Weimar by the Duke, and left Rome in April, 1788.  In his journal he compared himself to Ovid being sent into exile.  However, he had found, or at least re-ignited, his creative spark in Italy; and his long and fruitful life in Weimar produced the great works for which he is remembered:  The two Wilhelm Meister novels, the dramas Faust, Egmont, Iphigenia in Tauris, and others.  He also conducted scientific experiments on the nature of color, wrote influential philosophical works, and poetic works including the Roman Elegies, Elective Affinities and many more.

Traces of Goethe’s affection for Rome and Rome’s regard for her honored guest are found in surprising places.  His son August is buried in the Protestant Cemetery; Viale di Goethe is a street in Borghese Park that leads to a monumental marble statue of the poet, surrounded by characters from his works; there is a structure near Galleria Borghese called the Rotunda di Goethe because it is where he liked to read on pleasant afternoons.

The tangible memory of Goethe’s sojourn in Italy is kept alive by the Casa di Goethe museum, which was opened in 1997.  The permanent exhibit is an extensive and fascinating collection of letters, drawings, books and memorabilia of his stay in Rome, including a plaster cast of the head of Juno. It is a copy of the one he kept in his bedroom and took back to Weimar with him.  There was at least one woman in Rome he liked to wake up with.

It is thrilling for any admirer of the great man to be in the very rooms where his genius was revitalized, and stand at the windows from which he observed the vivid life of Rome below on the Corso, or contemplated the peace of the inner courtyard.  There are paintings and drawings by Tischbein and Goethe’s other companion artists.  Andy Warhol’s colorful silkscreen version of the Campagna portrait adds a modern touch.

The museum sponsors cultural and musical events regularly at the house on the Corso, with themes of interest to Italians and Germans alike.  There is also an extensive library containing rare first editions of Goethe’s books, many other works about him, and also volumes about such subjects as the tradition of the “Italian Journey”, cultural exchange between Italy and Germany, and the history of ideas in both countries. 

For those who visit Rome, and value Goethe’s genius, a pilgrimage to Sgr. Tischbein’s rooms can be inspiring, for Goethe’s stay in Italy and in Rome had a profound effect upon him as a man, a thinker, and a poet.

Of course, he was not the first, nor the last, poet to yearn for  ”a beaker full of the warm south, full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene” as John Keats later put it.  (The Hippocrene was a mythical spring whose waters provided poetic inspiration.)  But after his Italian sojourn, back in Weimar, he won lasting fame and a place among the giants of world literature.  Perhaps, in the warmth of Italy, the man who fled south from Carlsbad found his own well of creativity, inside himself.

Text © 2015 by Joe Gartman; Photographs © 2015 by Patricia Gartman. First published in German Life Magazine, June/July 2015