“Wir waren sehr heiter”: Reisetagebuch 1819 (review)

Abstract

von Goethe, Wir waren sehr heiter: Reisetagebuch 1819, ed. Gabriele Radecke. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 2007. 334 pp. + 22 ill. d. 4. May 19. Fruh 6 Uhr fuhren Ottilie und ich, nach einem etwas wehmutigen Abschied, von Weimar ab (33). So begins the travel diary of von Goethe, who with his wife traveled in the father's stead to Berlin in 1819. took leave from his post, but the three weeks in Berlin were more working vacation than holiday. As Gabriele Radecke writes in her introduction to this first publication of the diary, Goethe (whose only visit to Berlin was in 1778) planned the couple's trip die eigenen Forschungsinteressen (23). Or, as Wilhelm Bode put it (Der Sohn Goethes, 1918):Der Sohn wuste es nicht anders, als das er Tagebuch fur den Vater fuhren muste, angefullt mit lauter Tatsachlichem und so, das der Papa nachher, bei mundlicher Unterhaltung an der Hand dieser Notizen die Reise Schritt vor Schritt durchnehmen und sie in semer starken Einbildungskraft nacherleben konnte. Thus, for example, May 18: Mittag asen wir zu Hause mit Zelters, um 5 Uhr gingen wir in die Singacademie. Groses Credo von Cherubini Dr. Forsters Bekanntschaft erneuert; um 7 Uhr ging ich ins Theater - meme Frau zu Nicoloviussens. - Letzter Act von Dopelpapa gesehen Devrient sehr gut. Dann Kinder Ballet . (77). To compensate for such spareness, Radecke has interspersed the diary entries with August's letters home and with various autobiographical texts, mostly letters (for example, be tween Ottilie and her mother, letters from Adele Schopenhauer reporting on her family troubles and gossip in Weimar). The same procedure was followed for the publication of the journal of August's 1830 Rome journey, of which Radecke was co-editor with Andreas Beyer (Auf einer Reise nach Suden. Tagebuch 1830 [Munich, 1999]). (Radecke also wrote the afterword to a new edition, in 2002, of Bode's biography of August.) Since and Ottilie also spent twelve days in Dresden on their return to Weimar, Wir waren sehr heiter represents (as per the half-title on page 25) August von Goethes Reise nach Preusen und Sachsen im Jahr 1819. Tagebuch und Briefe, in chronological sequence (27-194). This combination of documents, according to Radecke, serves to provide a portrait not only of family relations but also of emerging culture tourism in the nineteenth century. In connection with the latter, she has provided extensive notes (205-80) and registers of persons (294-322) and places (322-31). In view of the relative lack of authentische Reisebeschreibungen aus Berlin und Dresden zu Beginn des 19.Ja_irhunderts(13),August's written notes offer the twenty-firstcentury reader insight into the general conditions of travel at that time as well as ein umfassendes Bild von der vielfaltigen, aber langst vergangenen Stadtkultur (14). August's program included inspecting factories, an iron foundry, schools for the deaf and the blind, and a veterinary school, and attending the dissection of a whale. His reports of private and public collections of art show him to be a connoisseur of theatrical and operatic production values, of which there was in Berlin much to comment on: for example, the famous Schinkel stage set for Die Zauberflote (an illustration of which appears on page 97). Radecke 's short foreword (7-24) introduces those with whom Goethe's representatives associated during their three weeks in Berlin. These included leading cultural and political personalities, from Ludwig Nicolovius up to King Friedrich Wilhelm III, from Hegel and Johann Gottfried Langermann to ET. A. Hoffmann and the Mendelssohn Bartholdy prodigies. Still, the separation of Radecke 's commentary from the diary and other documents makes for awkward reading, and this edition can be profitably complemented, especially for the Prussian background, with Konrad Kettig's Goetheverehrung in Berlin: Ein Besuch von und Ottilie v. …