Detail of a Weimar Privy Council order. See reference page

Professor Wilson's work highlights the dynamic nature of literature and literary figures, who are kept alive through time by a process of rediscovery and reinterpretation that serves to deepen our understanding of the present as well as of the past. Wilson didn't set out to attack Goethe and touch a collective nerve among Germans. He has spent the past two decades studying relations between 18th-century intellectuals and the state, and his book on political conflict and human rights in classical Weimar evolved from that work. But it's no accident that his book came out in 1999, when Germans were celebrating the 250th birthday of Goethe and the town of Weimar, where Goethe resided from 1775 until he died in 1832. Weimar -- Germany's intellectual hub during the Enlightenment and later the birthplace of the Bauhaus movement -- was selected by the European Union as the Continent's "Cultural Capital" for 1999. The international spotlight that came with that designation fell not just on Weimar's luminaries, however; exhibitions and commentaries also focused on the Buchenwald concentration camp adjacent to Weimar, where the Nazis killed more than 50,000 people from 1937 to 1945. Wilson's book coincided with a series of events in 1999 that prompted Germans to reflect on their history's extreme highs and lows. Wilson says it would be difficult to exaggerate the crucial role Goethe plays in Germany's national identity and the degree to which Goethe and the Weimar of his day are revered. "Weimar has always played this role as 'the better Germany.' And Germans really need it -- they need this kind of non-politicized high point in German culture," says Wilson. What Wilson did was both politicize and taint this supposedly unpolitical culture by exploring Goethe's actions as an influential political player in the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar. Goethe, a close friend to the duke, served as a privy councillor in the government and was considered the duchy's second-most powerful politician. The duchy's regime was authoritarian, yet because of the influence of those in Weimar who espoused the Enlightenment's liberal ideals -- particularly Goethe and his friend, the writer Friedrich Schiller -- it has long been viewed as an example of despotism that at its core was socially progressive.

Goethe's writings from his service as a privy councillor have been published, but Wilson went beyond that material. He combed through thousands of old government documents that bear Goethe's initials and other notations that indicate Goethe's involvement. The result: surprising evidence that Goethe condoned several repressive policies that were controversial even within the government. For example, Wilson studied a 1783 manuscript from a Prussian army recruiter that tipped him off to the previously unknown fact that Goethe and other central players in Weimar's government sold prisoners to England to serve as soldiers in the American War of Independence -- an act that breached both the humanitarian ideals and the legal principles in Weimar itself. In addition, Goethe acquiesced in maintaining a network of informants for spying on university professors, and he approved of severe punishments for peasants who nonviolently protested against the expansion of their feudal duties.

	Wilson also uncovered evidence that scholars during the Third Reich ignored and in some cases suppressed archival material that tarnished Goethe's reputation. The professor got his first inkling that important details had been overlooked about 10 years ago while comparing the printed, standard edition of the Duke of Weimar's correspondence with original, unedited manuscripts. In the printed edition, "there was a consistent pattern of leaving out passages that related to denunciations, police spies, and all that," he recalls. Many Germans -- particularly those in the former East Germany, who regard Goethe and Weimar as "theirs" -- were angered by the details Wilson revealed, feeling as though a foreigner had attacked a national monument. And given their sensitivity to the specter of government surveillance, many were particularly shocked to learn that Goethe had a hand in employing spies at the university. Wilson says more than one East German interviewer asked him, more seriously than in jest, "Are you going to take Weimar from us, too?" What's more, Wilson challenged popular opinion by drawing connections between history's favorable treatment of classical Weimar and contemporary assessments of East German socialism, saying both gloss over the fact that those regimes disregarded political rights. He notes that defenders of classical Weimar will argue that the duchy ruled in the interest of the lower classes, just as those who regard the former East Germany with nostalgia argue that the socialist state ruled in the interest of its people by creating an enviable social safety net. "They focus not on the democratic freedoms they won [through reunification], but on the social benefits they lost," Wilson says of some East Germans. Reviewers praised the thoroughness and originality of Wilson's book, and one noted, "The very ill-considered reactions of many German scholars to Wilson's studies show that the need to idealize or whitewash Goethe is still very prevalent among many Goethe experts." Wilson's research undoubtedly will provoke other scholars to re-examine the inner nature of Goethe, whose hero, Faust, declared, "Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast, and each will wrestle for mastery there." "To me, it makes Goethe much more interesting," Wilson says of his findings. "More contradictory and puzzling, and certainly more fascinating."
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