The End of the Affair: Goethe’s Gretchen “Roman”

Abstract: This article addresses the “truth” versus the “poetry” of the Gretchen episode of books 5 and 6 of Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth ). In this account of an amorous affair with a young woman of that name, Goethe was 14 years old and still living at his parents’ home. The time in question is 1763 to 1764, and the romance culminates on the eve of the imperial election and coronation in Frankfurt. The Gretchen episode is examined here as a fictionalization of Goethe’s relationship with Käthgen Schönkopf from 1767 to 1768 when he was a student in Leipzig, of which his autobiography offers only a superficial notion. By setting the Gretchen episode in his adolescence, Goethe underlines the immaturity of the poetry prompted by the “affair” with Käthgen, namely, anacreontic poetry, a style he would abandon, especially the “Lüsternheit” (lasciviousness) represented by the poems in the “Annette” collection. Two other surviving works from this period— Die Laune des Verliebten ( The Lover’s Caprice ; dramatizing Goethe’s jealousy of rivals for Käthgen’s affection) and Die Mitschuldigen ( The Accomplices ; portraying the inn-like setting of the Schönkopf household)—are also literary recreations of the affair. In addition, books 5 and 6, replete with texts ranging from fabricated love poems to legal documents and the diaries of earlier coronations, shed light on Goethe’s narrative method and on the autobiography as an assemblage of texts.