![GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832). Autograph letter signed ('G') to an unidentified recipient [his friend the writer Johann Heinrich Merck], Bern, 17 October [1779], 2 pages, 4to (light browning, minor fraying to edges).](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2007/CKS/2007_CKS_07411_0066_000(022245).jpg?w=1)
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GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832). Autograph letter signed ('G') to an unidentified recipient [his friend the writer Johann Heinrich Merck], Bern, 17 October [1779], 2 pages, 4to (light browning, minor fraying to edges).
THE YOUNG GOETHE ON A SWISS TOUR: the letter describes a tour, together with the philosopher Johann Caspar Lavater and Goethe's patron the Archduke Carl August of Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach, under the 'glücklichste Wetter' beginning at Speier, via Fribourg, Basle, Munster, Neuchâtel, Bern and later on to Lausanne, having taken in a tour of the glaciers, and visits to his brother-in-law Johann Georg Schlosser, to the print-maker and art dealer Christian von Mechel in Basle and the painter Johann Ludwig Aberli. In particular, Goethe is much moved by the mountain scenery and light, 'the sublime clearness of the sky, heat and cool, a green above everything'.
Goethe's second Swiss tour (the first had been undertaken in 1775) was undertaken on the pretext of organising a loan in Bern for the Archduke. Johann Heinrich Merck was a critic who proved particularly influential in the early years of the Sturm und Drang; he was acquainted with Goethe from the latter's stay in his native town of Darmstadt in the early 1770s (where he was in the circle of the poet's future brother-in-law Schlosser, referred to in this letter), and they were to remain friends until Merck's death by suicide in 1791.
THE YOUNG GOETHE ON A SWISS TOUR: the letter describes a tour, together with the philosopher Johann Caspar Lavater and Goethe's patron the Archduke Carl August of Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach, under the 'glücklichste Wetter' beginning at Speier, via Fribourg, Basle, Munster, Neuchâtel, Bern and later on to Lausanne, having taken in a tour of the glaciers, and visits to his brother-in-law Johann Georg Schlosser, to the print-maker and art dealer Christian von Mechel in Basle and the painter Johann Ludwig Aberli. In particular, Goethe is much moved by the mountain scenery and light, 'the sublime clearness of the sky, heat and cool, a green above everything'.
Goethe's second Swiss tour (the first had been undertaken in 1775) was undertaken on the pretext of organising a loan in Bern for the Archduke. Johann Heinrich Merck was a critic who proved particularly influential in the early years of the Sturm und Drang; he was acquainted with Goethe from the latter's stay in his native town of Darmstadt in the early 1770s (where he was in the circle of the poet's future brother-in-law Schlosser, referred to in this letter), and they were to remain friends until Merck's death by suicide in 1791.
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