Goethe’s Dichtung und Wahrheit: Aus meinem Leben, which covers the first twenty-five years of his life, ranks among the greatest of autobiographies. His purpose in writing it was is to sketch the personal background of his writings and to exhibit a continuity of personal identity that the fragmentary and occasional nature of his published works might otherwise lead the reader to doubt. The title Dichtung und Wahrheit, a coincidentia oppositorum or coincidence of opposites, is only imperfectly translated as “Poetry and Truth”. It confesses that every self-portrait imposes a false coherence on the jumble of history and is inevitably a “Fiktion”, although Goethe conscientiously studied both printed histories and his own surviving diary entries and letters, asking also for details from friends and acquaintances.
An implicit ideal of objectivity, marked by the...
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Citation: Dye, Ellis. "Dichtung und Wahrheit: Aus meinem Leben". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 July 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5651, accessed 12 February 2026.]
