Reynard the Fox after the German version of Goethe, by A. Douglas Ainslie

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was born in Frankfurt and trained as a lawyer, but at twenty-four his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther made him famous across Europe. Invited to the small court of Weimar, he served as a minister for years while writing poems, plays and novels, and pursuing serious research in botany, anatomy and the theory of colour.

His friendship with the poet Schiller and his journey to Italy shaped German classicism, and his Faust, the work of sixty years, is the summit of German literature. Goethe admired the Persian poet Hafez and the Quran, and his West-Eastern Divan was an early bridge between European and Islamic poetry.