Chapter 26 explores the role of the English language and the culture of Britain on Goethe’s development. The influences began in his childhood, and became particularly significant in his twenties, owing not least to his friendship with Herder and their shared enthusiasm for Shakespeare and Ossian. The chapter also emphasises the importance of visitors from Britain in furthering Goethe’s knowledge of a country to which he never travelled himself, and examines his relationship with contemporary British writers, above all Byron and Carlyle. It closes with an overview of the reception of Goethe in Britain.

Chapter 24 offers an overview of Goethe’s geological output, a vast but somewhat understudied area of his work. It focuses in particular on Ilmenau, where between 1776 and 1796 Goethe supervised a mining project, and it argues that, despite the ultimate failure of the enterprise, the Ilmenau period was crucial in developing Goethe’s understanding of geological issues. The chapter also charts the course of Goethe’s geological work after the Ilmenau period, and it brings to light the geological references which pervade his literary work – including Faust and some of his best-loved poems.

Chapter 21 examines Goethe’s relationship to German Idealism. Although the speculative nature of the Idealist method appears alien to Goethe’s own thought, and he himself expressed reservations about it, his poetic and scientific works display a significant degree of sympathy with the concerns that motivated his contemporaries. The chapter highlights the importance of Spinoza in the alignment between Goethe and Idealist thought, before considering in detail the significance of Kant, Fichte, Hegel and above all Schelling, whose philosophy of nature and art is particularly resonant with Goethe’s own.

Chapter 1 details the major events in Goethe’s long and varied life, from its beginning to its end, and explains their significance for his development. The scope of the account ranges from intimate details of Goethe’s life to the impact of major political events on him and his work. It follows Goethe from location to location, examines the many strands of his career and considers particularly important relationships, professional, literary, intellectual and personal. The chapter also explains the circumstances of the composition of all his most significant works.

Chapter five moves to the third main theme of the book, that of Aachen itself. Where earlier scholars took note of only a few sources, Sulovsky reconstructs Barbarossa’s crown chandelier, known as the Barbarossaleuchter, on the basis of findings ranging from annals, charters, liturgical books and theological literature to the visual and textual consonances of the chandelier with other parts of the Marienkirche in Aachen. This demonstrates deep traditionalism of Aachen, including the link between Aachen’s Carolingian dome mosaics, Alcuin’s commentary on the Apocalypse that was its textual counterpart and exposition, and the Barbarossaleuchter, which imitates both the dome and the commentary numerologically and visually. By using the annals of Aachen, a text barely noticed by historians, the dating of the chandelier’s inauguration is established. The chapter shows how Saladin’s emissaries were kept in attendance during Easter 1174, when the chandelier was being dedicated, so that Barbarossa could have Arabic representatives present. This was done in order to imitate Charlemagne’s cordial relationship with the Arab caliph Harun al-Rashid, who had given his Christian counterpart two golden candelabra, which Charlemagne then dedicated to the Virgin of Aachen. Thus, Frederick was not trying to sacralise the Empire, but to follow Charlemagne’s example.

Chapter 17 considers Goethe’s extensive collections, which ranged in subject matter from art and ethnography to natural history and scientific instruments, and also included a vast library. It uses the period around his Italian journey (1786–8), when his involvement with art and art objects was particularly intense, to highlight tensions within his approach to collecting which apply throughout his career as a collector. The chapter also addresses the complexity of classifying Goethe’s collections, owing to their scale and diversity, and to the variety of his own collecting habits.

Chapter 18 explores Goethe’s influence on the development of the Weimar landscape, from the gardens of his own houses on the River Ilm and the Frauenplan, to the Ilm Park, grounds that belonged to Weimar’s ruler but were also made available for public leisure use. It also charts the reciprocal relationship between Goethe’s landscaping activity and his literary work, from the resonances of his Werther in his first garden on the Ilm, to those later pieces – especially Die Wahlverwandschaften (Elective Affinities) – which build on his own work with and study of gardens.

The third chapter delivers a reassessment of the cult of Charlemagne from his death in 814 to Frederick Barbarossa’s accession in 1152. The use of local Aquensian and regional Lotharingian material shows that the widely known developments of the memory of Charlemagne had a particular regional and unique local tendency. Sulovsky’s focus in this chapter is on the Karlsdekret, a forgery pretending to be Charlemagne’s foundation charter for the city and convent of Aachen. Where historians previously dated it to before about 1147, Sulovsky affirms that the forged seal of Charlemagne, the Karlssiegel, which dates to the late 1120s, must have been impressed on the original copy of the forgery. Thus, the forgery was an imitation of an imperial charter, and it was designed to impress Lothar III in 1127. This small find redates and reshapes all of what we know about the rise of the cult of Charlemagne in crusade-era Europe. Aachen had a particular stake in shaping the memory of its most famous patron, but it also wielded an influence over it as it contained his tomb.

Chapter 3 explains the development of the court and society of Weimar, from the strategic decisions taken by Anna Amalia during her regency to the influence of her son, Carl August. The chapter considers the different forms of sociability that were cultivated, alongside the roles of particular institutions in the life of Weimar, above all the theatre and the university at nearby Jena. It addresses the paradox of a society that was at once conservative and progressive, a tension which was also reflected in Goethe’s own career in the town.

Chapter 16 examines the drawings that Goethe produced throughout his life and places his work in its art-historical context. Over the course of the eighteenth century, drawing had come to be seen as an essential artistic technique; Goethe received instruction in drawing in his early years, and from that time on, he drew wherever he was. The chapter analyses the evolution of his work and the shifting influences on it: Dutch art played an important early role, and the inspiration that he received in Italy, including from contemporaries based there, was crucial.

Chapter 36 reflects on the ways in which Goethe’s meaning and value have evolved. Analysis of Goethe’s legacy and reception demands that we attend to the historical situation of the readers too, and that we remain alert to the role of politics in shaping responses to and uses of his work. The chapter considers Goethe’s afterlife in a variety of contexts, from his prominence in German secondary education between 1871 and 1914 to the mixed feelings of German-Jewish readers in the 1930s. It also analyses Goethe’s own interventions in his reception.

Chapter 5 details the workings of social estates of eighteenth-century Germany. Many of Goethe’s works of prose and drama either directly depict his own society, or transpose significant features of that social world to a different historical setting. The chapter highlights the differences in the social organisation of rural areas on the one hand, and of towns and cities on the other. Further, it distinguishes between the social structure of Frankfurt, Goethe’s birthplace and a large city, and Weimar, a small residence town with the duke at the top of its hierarchy.

The second chapter continues the investigation of sacrum imperium, demonstrating that while the imperial chancery used the term more and more frequently, it was only the strong Italian presence at court that kept influencing the imperial notaries to use it and other correlated terms. It is also made clear that the converse was true: when there were no Italians at court, this kind of terminology was not used, even as late as the 1220s. The investigation shows, contrary to expectations, that cities where this terminology was used could be identified, and occasionally even individuals could be pinpointed. Moreover, the presence of courtiers or diplomats from the city of Rome is clearly correlated to the appearance of the tripartite title of the Empire (sacrum Romanum imperium and sacrum imperium Romanum). Thus, the most commonly used title of the Empire for most of its existence was not only invented by the Romans, as Jürgen Petersohn demonstrated, but it was also propagated by them to the rest of the Empire and the world.

Chapter 22 introduces the concept of morphology, the study of form which attends to both the uniqueness of individual manifestations of life and the invariable laws which underpin them. Rather than forming a single theory, Goethe’s extensive reflections on morphology emerged in different contexts and run throughout his oeuvre. The chapter examines the most significant stages in Goethe’s engagement with morphology, from his search for the Urpflanze (primeval plant) in Sicily to his development of Anschauung (intuition) as a method, and positions him in relation to other thinkers, above all Wolff and Kant.

Chapter 9 explores Goethe’s development as a dramatist, from the works of the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) era, through the classical period to his last plays, and the associated shifts in style. It considers both the dramas that have entered the canon and those – such as the fragments, masques and Singspiele – that have now largely been forgotten. The chapter also emphasises the importance of seeing Goethe not only as a playwright but also as a practitioner, whose involvement in the Weimar court theatre helped to shape his writing.