Goethe House and Goethe Museum

‘As the bells tolled noon’ is how Johann Wolfgang von Goethe describes his birth on 28. August 1749 in ‘Poetry and Truth’. Today, the Goethe House and the Goethe Museum stand on the site of his birthplace. The 17th century building was destroyed by bombs in the Second World War. Nevertheless, the house has been faithfully restored to the original. The furnishings of the kitchen, living room and reception rooms correspond to bourgeois life of the Late Baroque period.

Goethe’s study on the second floor is equipped as in the past. This is where the master wrote ‘Götz von Berlichingen’, the ‘Urfaust’ and ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’. Today, languages from all over the world can be heard in these rooms. For this is where hundreds of thousands of admirers from all corners of the globe come to on a pilgrimage.

The Goethe Museum presents an extensive collection of paintings, graphics and busts of the 18th and 19th centuries from the Late Baroque and Classicism to Romantic and Biedermeier. This vividly shows the relationship of the poet to art and to artists such as Johann Heinrich Füssli, Caspar David Friedrich and Frankfurt artists.

The non-profit Freie Deutsche Hochstift maintains the memorial, with Goethe’s parents’ house, the Goethe Museum, the poet archive and a research library. In special exhibitions, the visitors can see valuable and sensitive documents and prints from the collection, the manuscript archive and the library.