Goethe Revisited: “A Timely Death”

May 5, 2012 by joachim

I’ve been obsessed with the story of Goethe’s mother, who announced on Sep 11, 1808  that she was going to die two days hence.  It so happened that a Patrician family in Frankfurt close to the Goethes, the Manskopfs, is closely related to a branch that settled in Siegen, to which I belong.  So Frau von Goethe’s remarkable prediction, which turned out to be true, is part of my family chronicle.

In the story “A Timely Death” I have brought several elements together that are based on historic facts, though they did not occur in the sequence in which I put them for dramatic effect.

Facts:  his musings about Myron’s Cow; the incident reported by a young woman who yielded to Goethe’s request to let him hold her breasts; his collection of minerals and fossils; his upcoming meeting with Napoleon whom he greatly admired; the historic persons Lieselotte and Johannes Manskopf, who gained wealth by international wine trading and had dishes made of solid gold.

Fiction: his hasty trip to Frankfurt, too late to see his mother before she passed away.

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