Goethe, JOHANN

WOLFGANG VON, 1749-1832. German lyric and dramatic poet, novelist, and scientific writer. His first great works were Götz von Berlichingen, a drama of national history, 1773, and Werther, 1774. From 1775 he lived at Weimar, the head not only of the literary group there, but of German literature. There he produced his greatest works: Iphigenia, 1779; Egmont, 1788; Wilhelm Meister, 1795; Hermann und Dorothea, 1797: Faust, 1st part, 1805; Elective Affinities, 1809; Westöstlicher Divan, 1813; Faust, 2d part, 1830. His lyric poetry has a wonderful compa , his ballads especially. He held several offices, and was greatly valued by by the Grand Duke. In botany he wrote Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären, 1790, and Zur Zur nat urw is sens chaft über haupt, be sonders zur Mor phologie, 1817-24. After pub. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. the Metamorphoses of Plants , 1790. he projected, and in 1813 pub., the Metamorphoses of Animals , in which he traces unity of type in the structure of all animals. He was thus an evolutionist and opposed to Cuvier. His conception of the skull as consisting of modified and ankylosed vertebræ, best developed by Owen in his Anatomy and Physiology of Vertebrates , has been replaced by a more modern theory involving the affirmation of the principle that the head is segmented, but denying the vertebral character of its bones. See CEPHALIC SEGMENTS.