Goethe: The History of a Man

by Emil Ludwig

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Genres: Biography, History

Paperback

First published January 1, 1922

About the author

Emil Ludwig (originally named Emil Cohn) was born in Breslau, now part of Poland. Ludwig studied law but chose writing as a career. At first he wrote plays and novella, but also worked as a journalist. In 1906, he moved to Switzerland, but, during World War I, he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt in Vienna and Istanbul. He became a Swiss citizen in 1932, later emigrating to the United States in 1940.

At the end of the Second World War, he went to Germany as a journalist, and it is to him that we owe the retrieving of Goethe's and Schiller's coffins, which had disappeared from Weimar in 1943/44. He returned to Switzerland after the war and died in 1948, in Moscia, near Ascona.

During the 1920s, he achieved international fame for his popular biographies which combined historical fact and fiction with psychological analysis. After his biography of Goethe was published in 1920, he wrote several similar biographies, including one about Bismarck (1922–24) and another about Jesus (1928). As Ludwig's biographies were popular outside of Germany and were widely translated, he was one of the fortunate émigrés who had an income while living in the United States. His writings were considered particularly dangerous by Goebbels, who mentioned him in his journal.

Ludwig interviewed Benito Mussolini and on December 1, 1929 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. His interview with the founder of the Republic of Turkey appeared in Wiener Freie Presse in March 1930, addressing issues of religion and music. He also interviewed Joseph Stalin in Moscow on December 13, 1931. An excerpt from this interview is included in Stalin's book on Lenin. Ludwig describes this interview in his biography of Stalin. What was originally an omitted section of the interview by Joseph Stalin himself, Professor of Montclair State University Grover Furr had finally published an English version of it.

Ludwig's extended interviews with T.G. Masaryk, founder and longtime president of Czechoslovakia, appeared as Defender of Democracy in 1936.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 1 out of 5]

First, let me say, I only got 100 pages through this book, and then I had to put it down. Here's why.

I picked up this early 1900's hardback at a used bookstore, and was probably AS excited about its aesthetics as I was its topic. It's a pretty book. But it's a painful read. Ludwig seems not to know how, or in what 'voice', to tell Goethe's story. The first thing I noticed is that it is choppy and lacks rhythm. Then I started to feel as if Ludwig grew self-conscious about not really understanding Goethe's life or couldn't quite grasp his meanings, and so he tried to hard to pull profound details from a relatively uneventful early life. It was too...poetic. It was as if Goethe's life baffled or dazzled Ludwig so that he felt the need to break out in song to either compete with the brilliance of the story or drown out its banality. It was weird. It was a war waged in Ludwig between the biographer, literary critic, and philosopher. Maybe he thought that he would disappoint his readers if he didn't try to turn every other line into an aphorism, or brood on life's mysteries. After a hundred pages I wasn't sure if I was reading about Goethe's life (more or less) or a digested version of him. Maybe Ludwig was known more for his style than his research?

I also have Ludwig's biography of Napoleon, which I plan on reading. I'm hoping Emil didn't feel in the poetic mood, and had enough action to focus on without falling back on soliloquy and grandiloquence. As far as another biography on Goethe, I am trying Goethe's autobiography, "Truth and Fiction Relating To My Life."

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

very good - easy reading