GOETHE (JOHANN WOLFGANG VON)
Autograph sentiment signed ('J.W.v. Goethe'), the second stanza of the poem 'Ilmenau', comprising six lines written in Sütterlinschrift beginning 'Wie kehrt ich oft mit wechselndem Geschicke...' ['How often I return with changing fortunes...'], one page, light dust-staining, remains of red wax seal, one small pin hole not affecting text, remains of marbled paper on reverse where previously mounted, mounted and framed, unexamined out of frame, oblong 8vo (150 x 210mm., with frame 405 x 405mm.), [3 September 1783]
Footnotes:
'WIE KEHRT ICH OFT MIT WECHSELNDEM GESCHICKE, ERHABNER BERG!'

Ilmenau was a private poem written for the twenty-sixth birthday of Karl August, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1757-1828) on 3 September 1783. In it the Duke escapes courtly society and his wild past into a dream world of the beautiful valley of the Ilm, the poet hoping that he will soon develop his true nature, thus referencing his own 'Sturm und Drang' period. As Goethe explained to Eckermann in his Conversations of Goethe: '...'The poem of 'Ilmenau'... contains, as an episode, an epoch which, in the year 1783, when I wrote it, had happened many years before, so that I could describe myself in it as an historical personage, and could hold a conversation with the self of former years... the Duke soon worked himself out of this 'storm and stress' period into a state of useful clearness, so that on his birthday, in the year 1783, I could well remind him of this image of his earlier days... I will not deny that in the beginning he caused me much trouble and anxiety. Yet his noble nature soon cleared itself, and formed itself to the highest degree of perfection, so that it was a pleasure to live and act with him'...' (23 October 1828).

According to Ronald Gray, after a lively and promising start with some reminders of the youthful Goethe, the poem transitions rather unsuccessfully in style and content '...where the peasants and miners who were leading miserable lives at the beginning of the poem are suddenly said to be fully employed and contented. In the end, Goethe seems more concerned to make a tactful suggestion to the Duke about the running of his estates than to pursue his deeper problems any further... Despite several pleasing and amusing passages, Ilmenau marks the beginning of a period when Goethe would only rarely write poetry of distinction...' (Gray, R., Poems of Goethe: A Selection, 1966, p.66).

Goethe had been invited to the court at Weimar in 1775 after the success of his first novel The Sorrows of Young Werther and was to remain there for the rest of his life. He held a succession of offices including Commissioner for Mines and Highways which required him to regularly visit the small mining town of Ilmenau, from where he was able to escape into the mountains, away from the pressures of his duties. The surrounding landscape inspired one of his most famous poems, Wanderers Nachtlied which he wrote hurriedly on the walls of a wooden hut on the Kickelhahn mountain, a work which epitomises his love of the natural world and the local landscape.
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