Johann Peter Eckermann
Biography
Almost everything the world thinks it knows about how Goethe talked comes through one man, who arrived in Weimar in June 1823 with no job, hoping the old poet would read his manuscript. Goethe read it, asked him to stay and help with editorial work, and Eckermann never really left.
The conversations were not accidental
The Neue Deutsche Biographie puts it exactly: from initially more chance conversations there developed, over time, conscious and often planned exchanges. The Conversations with Goethe is therefore not a transcript of a man thinking aloud; it is a collaboration, increasingly deliberate on both sides, between a famous old writer and a young one who understood what he was collecting. That does not make it less valuable. It makes it a different kind of document from the one most readers assume.
Two volumes, then a third, 1837–1848
Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens 1823–32 appeared in two volumes in 1837, five years after Goethe's death, and a third followed in 1848. It was assembled by a man who had come to town to ask a favour.
What it earned him, 1823–1854
Not much. He tutored the crown prince Karl Alexander and served as librarian to Grand Duchess Maria Pawlowna; he was made a court councillor in 1843; and his salary as grand-ducal librarian was too small to live on properly. He died in Weimar in 1854, in a town that had become a place of pilgrimage not least because of a book he had written.
Questions visitors ask
- How did Johann Peter Eckermann come to know Goethe?
- He arrived in Weimar in June 1823 with no job, hoping Goethe would read his manuscript. Goethe did, invited him to stay and help with editorial work, and Eckermann never really left.
- What is the Conversations with Goethe?
- Eckermann's record of his exchanges with Goethe over the poet's last nine years, published in two volumes in 1837 and a third in 1848 — not a transcript of spontaneous talk, but an increasingly deliberate collaboration between the two men.
- What other roles did Eckermann hold in Weimar?
- He tutored the future Grand Duke Carl Alexander, served as librarian to Grand Duchess Maria Pawlowna, and was made a court councillor in 1843 — though his salary as grand-ducal librarian was too small to live on properly.
Notable Works & Achievements
Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens 1823–32 (vols I–II 1837, vol III 1848)
Historical Context
The period's stenographer — and the reason so much of it is quotable at all.
For roughly sixty years a duchy of a few thousand people held the centre of German literature, because its ruler kept inviting writers to live there and then gave them jobs. That is the whole mechanism, and it ran from Goethe's arrival in 1775 to his death in 1832.
Read more about this period →Quick Facts
1792
1854
German
On stage
On stage
Walter Hesse
The evening is his: the assistant of the title, handed a commission at last.