Projects of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar are funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Free State of Thuringia, represented by the State Chancellery of Thuringia, Department of Culture and the Arts.
PROPYLÄEN
Research platform on Goethe’s biographical works
As part of the 2015 academy programme of the Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities, the joint project “PROPYLÄEN. Research platform on Goethe’s biographical works” was established by the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, the Digital Academy of Mainz and the Saxon Academy of the Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig. The project is slated to run for 25 years, and the project’s offices are located at the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv in Weimar and the Freies Deutsches Hochstift in Frankfurt am Main.
Two main goals of the PROPYLÄEN project
The first goal is to build an integrated digital research platform on Goethe’s life, influence and works based on a multitude of catalogued resource materials and make it accessible to the research community and the general public.
The second goal is to continue and complete the work already underway at the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv in connection with publishing historical-critical editions of Goethe’s personal letters and diaries, an indexed edition of letters to Goethe with full-text transcriptions, and the edition of Goethe’s encounters and conversations.
PROPYLÄEN. Edition projects
Goethe’s letters
This new historical-critical edition contains the entire collection of Goethe’s letters, a corpus of over 15,000 handwritten letters, edited and annotated for the first time. The annotations serve to provide an overview of their content and reconstruct their historical-biographical context.
„All that is truly biographical – the letters, diaries, memoires and the like that remain behind – recreate a more or less real or more detailed image of one’s past life.“
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “Poetry and Truth” (1811)
Goethe’s diaries
The first historical-critical edition of Goethe’s diaries spanning more than 57 years of his life provides a comprehensive overview of all texts, classified using modern edition-scientific standards and supplemented with detailed annotations.
„Nothing is to be more highly prized than the value of each day.“
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years” (second edition, 1829)
Indexed edition of letters to Goethe
The indexed edition contains the holdings of all letters addressed to Goethe and facilitates multiple methods of usage. The body of texts consists of over 20,000 letters (not including official correspondence) by some 3,500 correspondent
„All these letters to me ... What a sight! Sometimes I am dizzied by it.“
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to Karl Ludwig von Knebel (21 November 1782)
Encounters and conversations
This edition documents Goethe’s daily meetings and conversations based on the poet’s personal notes and writings by contemporaries in correspondence, memoires and (auto)biographical texts, all listed in strictly chronological order.
„I do not deny that I have always found the spice of life in lively conversation.“
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years (1796)