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1749 – 1832 · Frankfurt am Main
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A lawyer who chose the writing life, and the poem he never stopped finishing.
About
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born in 1749 in Frankfurt, into a comfortable, well-read family. He trained as a lawyer, but writing pulled harder. At twenty-five he published The Sorrows of Young Werther, written the year before, a short novel about a young man wrecked by hopeless love. It made him famous across Europe almost overnight, because readers had never met a character who felt so raw and modern.
Books on the Atlas
- Faust, Part One 1808
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