Goethe's Art of Living

About the Book

Goethe researcher Katharine Mommsen draws the reader into the fascinating life of Germany's greatest literary genius, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). We discover how ordinary items such as the food we eat or the beverages we drink, and everyday activities like hiking, ice-skating, horseback riding, dancing the waltz, and music-making acquire fresh meaning within Goethe's own pantheistic life philosophy. He directed his wisdom toward keeping body and soul healthy, lively, focused, and strong as a basis for a fuller life - for him it became an essential part of the poet's worldly gospel. This book which is composed around hundreds of excerpts from Goethe's works, correspondences and conversations transcends biography, and shows us the poet's art of living in its richness in wit and wisdom, goodness, and love for humanity.

About the Author

Born in Berlin, Katharina Mommsen was educated at the Universities of Berlin, Freiburg, Mainz, and Tübingen where she received her Ph.D. in 1956. She began her academic career at the age of 24 as a Goethe researcher at the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin and started her teaching careeer at the Free University of Berlin in 1962. She lectured about Goethe in Europe, Asia, Africa and America and held guest professorships in Germany, Canada, and the United States. In 1974, she accepted a Professorship at Stanford University; in 1985, she became the holder of the prestigious endowed Albert Guerard Chair of Literature until her retirement in 1993. Among other awards, Katharina Mommsen received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, a Research Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, an Order of Merit First Class of the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Golden Goethe Medal of the International Goethe Society in Weimar. Katharina Mommsen is the author of more than 120 publications, including over a dozen books about Goethe. These are in German. In English, Who is Goethe? was published 1982 in New York. In 2000, Katharina Mommsen founded the Mommsen Foundation for the Advancement of Goethe Research in Palo Alto, California.