Das Goethe-Haus
Annelies Clauson taught me the German language. She was a high school teacher of great renown in my home town, having singlehandedly created and run an exchange program that brought more than 1000 German and American kids into each other’s homes, schools and lives.
More importantly than just the language, Frau Clauson imparted an appreciation for German and European culture. In our senior year, she took the class through a fast-clip review of grammar and then plunged us into European history, art, music, architecture and literature from Roman to modern times. Her lectures were delivered in German and to this day there are some architectural terms I know only in that language.
My appreciation for her panoramic introduction has deepened over time. It gave me scaffolding on which to build my experiences while traveling in Europe and to forge deeper understanding from reading, listening and seeing when visiting museums and concerts, or just reading a good book.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe isn’t well known in the US. In Germany, his works have the broad renown of a Shakespeare or Charles Dickens in English-speaking regions. German schoolchildren memorize his poems, his quotations are on everyone’s tongue, and his original thoughts are still a substrate in casual discourse. In the US we might know the story of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice or Faust, without being conscious of the source.
Sometime in the 1980’s a German friend gave me at cassette recording by a actor reciting a narrative about Goethe’s life interspersed with his poems. The performer was Lutz Görner. The perfect diction and beautiful cadence of the readings, Görner’s resonant and expressive voice were completely captivating, to say nothing of the poems by Goethe and the fascinating story of his life. I listened to that cassette hours and hours and ended up memorizing several of the poems, in the course of which I vastly improved my pronunciation of German, too.
I am delighted to see Lutz Görner is still active and online. A version of the Goethe cassette recitation is available on YouTube (Part 1).
For a non-native reader, Goethe’s poems deliver a double pleasure when read in German. One can first marvel at the condensed streams of human emotion made confluent by so keen a hand. And then marvel at the dense delivery marshaled by the language itself.
Breitest über mein Gefild
Lindernd deinen Blick
Wie des Freundes Auge mild
Über mein Geschick.
How to cast that in English? How to achieve the balance and economy, the associations and depth?
The story of Goethe’s life can be found online. Read it to begin an appreciation for a dazzling flower of the Enlightenment.