Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and his activities in road construction
This article presents a review of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s production activities. In Russia specialists in literature, historians, Goethe’s commentators and biographers paid no attention (as non-professionals) to the poet’s knowledge of geology, soil science and construction and could not evaluate his contribution to the development of road building industry in Germany. Being Director of the Department for Road Construction in the Grand Dukedom of Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach, he made competent decisions on carrying out earthworks to prepare roadway base. Goethe laid down professional principles and guidelines for the art of road building in Germany, which later on resulted in creation of highly reliable roads in the country that accorded wide recognition. The article shows Goethe’s solid knowledge of engineering geology, including his deep understanding of the processes inherent in the internal and external dynamics of the Earth. At the same time he managed to impressively transfer geological concepts into the language of poetry and put them into the characters’ mouths of his Faust. Also, Goethe brilliantly expressed in this tragedy two alternative geological theories on the origin of rocks, namely, neptunism and plutonism. During his whole life the poet collected, studied and systematized samples from “the three kingdoms of Nature”. These are minerals and rocks, fossils of plants and animals. Part of his collection is exhibited now in the Goethe Museum in Frankfurt am Main and the Garden House of Goethe in Weimar.