Christiane von Goethe: Her Vengeful Return

Christiane von Goethe: Her Vengeful Return

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, eminent 19th century German poet and novelist, once confessed: “I know how to execute and take responsibility for a poetic work, but my life works have never really succeeded.” Goethe has chosen to start a family outside his royal society’s strict social and religious laws with 23-year-old Christiane Vulpius from Weimar’s lower class. A “Me Too” movement was not even thinkable when girls were still married off by their fathers and Goethe still follows the tradition of keeping girls out of school and grooming them to be good cooks, wives and mothers. For twenty-eight years, briefly married, Christiane runs Goethe’s large household so he can devote time to his enormous literary production and frequent travels. Christiane and her illegitimately born son August are ostracized by Weimar society. Both die abandoned by Goethe, their names erased from his memoir, as well as August’s name from his own tomb in Rome. Two hundred years after Christiane’s death a mysterious young guide awakens her to put Goethe on the general judgment seat of morality.