Goethe in the Haus

(Großer Hirschgraben 23-25, Innenstadt, Frankfurt, 22 August 2026)

The ‘German Shakespeare’ – poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre-director, and critic – was born in this house on 28 August 1749 and here he learned to “storm and stress,” writing works including The Sorrows of Young Werther (regarded as the world’s first ‘best seller’) and initial drafts of his sublime Faust. Faust Part One was published in 1808; Part Two was only completed before his death on 22 March 1832, and published posthumously.

The original was destroyed by WWII bombs but was re-constructed from 1947 to 1951. It originally looked like this:

There was no real garden, which he bemoaned in his autobiography, Dichtung und Wahrheit (“Poetry and Truth”, although Goethe’s cunning wording suggests an alternate translation: “Fiction and Truth”). Four storeys and an attic, connected by an elaborate baroque staircase, the rooms heated with ornamental ovens.

He died in Weimar, aged 82; his last words are said to be “more light.”

If Goethe came back to Frankfurt today, he’d perhaps day: “more Schädlingsbekämpfung.”