Lecture: Faust (NDL)

This course is the lecture "Faust" in Modern German Literature, which was held in the winter semester 2023/24.

Goethe's double Faust drama is no doubt also familiar to those who do not study German literature: After all, phrases such as "des Pudels Kern" or the so-called "Gretchenfrage" come from Faust I. To this day, this text is regularly the subject of German lessons in twelfth or thirteenth grade.

However, many people do not realise that Goethe's text cannot actually be understood without knowledge of the material tradition since the 16th century. The fact that this material tradition includes a wide range of literary texts before and after Goethe makes the situation even more exciting: novels, religious instructional writings, puppet and folk plays, verses, of course tragedies and tragedies and even dance poems and parodies.

The lecture presents around 20 of these texts between the "Historia von D. Johann Fausten" (1587) and Friedrich Theodor Vischer's "Faust III" (1886).