Monsieur Göthé: Goethes unbekannter Großvater by Heiner Boehncke, Hans Sarkowicz, and Joachim Seng (review)

Monsieur Göthé makes evident the aptness of the phrase "born with a silver spoon in his mouth" in the case of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In view of the interest in recent years in the poet's financial affairs and his knowledge of economic matters, it is not surprising that the authors would wish to throw light on the source of Goethe's wealth and on his own acknowledgment to Eckermann of the great sums of money that had been spent, "um das zu lernen, was ich weiß." The inheritance of Johann Caspar, Goethe's father, in 1730 from his father, Friedrich Georg, victualer at the "Weidenhof" on the Zeil in Frankfurt, is concretely enumerated (sacks and sacks full of louis d'ors, ducats, "Vikariatstaler," and other gold coins, but also approximately 12,000 liters of wine). Goethe came into the world with an immense "Weinvorrat, . . . der gepflegt, umgefüllt, mit Kennerschaft und in ziemlich großen Mengen getrunken wurde," especially of the premier Mosel wines of the years 1706, 1719, and 1726, which his mother affectionately referred to as "die alten Herren" (31).

The title of this text alludes to the four years Friedrich Georg (b. 1657) spent as a tailor apprentice in the "silk city" of Lyon, France, from 1681 to 1685, when the accent was apparently added to prevent shortening of the family name. (A second alteration occurred when Johann Caspar matriculated at the Casimirianum in Coburg in 1725; the Latin document did not recognize an umlaut.) Lyon was part of the twelve-year "Wanderschaft" of the Thuringia-born apprentice tailor, who left France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and moved to Frankfurt, married a tailor's daughter, and became a sought-after dressmaker ("eine Art Karl Lagerfeld von Frankfurt. . . . Unter den Damenschneidern der Stadt war er einer der ersten," 264). Between 1686 and 1704 this self-made man (259) went from the lowest tax category to the highest. In 1705, as a widower, he married the widow of the proprietor of the Weidenhof and ran that business until his death in 1730. One indication of his wealth can be seen in the 2,700 guilders that Johann Caspar earned in interest income in 1770, the year he married Catharina Elisabeth Textor. In contrast, his new father-in-law, Johann Wolfgang Textor, the highest city official, earned 1,700 guilders a year.

Friedrich Georg and the Thuringian Göthes are not exactly unknown. Biographical research in the late nineteenth century produced several studies of the family tree. The earliest documented Göthe was Hans, born about 1500 in Sonderhausen, who, it is reckoned (from a variety of contemporary sources), was a stone carver. It is with his grandson Hans Christian Göthe the Younger (b. 1604), a blacksmith, that a genealogical record begins to emerge. Unfortunately, the documentary record for Friedrich Georg is scant. The archives in Artern, where he lived from the age of two, were destroyed in a great fire in 1683. There is no record of his apprenticeship in Germany, only a later account of his having spent eight years of it in Saxon lands and in the Reich. There is not a single scrap of paper of his residence in Lyon; like most Protestants working in France, he kept his head down: "Er blieb unsichtbar, hinterliess keine Spuren" (145). The first documented piece of his existence in Frankfurt was his citizenship petition (signed as "Fredericus Georg Göthé") in 1687.

The authors have been assiduous in their "Spurensuche." For those like myself who love reading the results of archival research, Monsieur Göthé has many delights, and the introduction, discussing the surviving original sources, presents a good picture of what archivists do. In the end, however, this study is perforce about the changing world in which an ambitious individual could rise from lowly origins to wealth and reputation. Alongside surveying late seventeenth-century apprenticeship customs and...