TU Ilmenau Bürgercampus - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the (chronically) suffering patient

Topic: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the (chronically) suffering patient

Speaker: Dr. med. habil. Friedrich Meier

Time: Friday, March 7, 2025, 3:00 p.m.

Location: TU Ilmenau, Faradaybau, Weimarer Straße 32

Admission: 5 euros

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is revered above all as a brilliant poet and writer. Less well known are his achievements as a scientist: as a botanist, biologist, mineralogist, meteorologist or anatomist. But Goethe was much more: painter and draughtsman, philosopher, politician and diplomat, administrator, director of theaters and museums. With his enormous life's work, Goethe is for many a symbol of physical and mental health - especially in view of his long life for the time: Goethe died at 82.

But in reality, Goethe's life was overshadowed by various serious illnesses. A few years before his death, he said to Johann Peter Eckermann, his confidant in the last years of his life: "I have always been praised as someone particularly favored by good fortune, nor do I want to complain or criticize the course of my life. But basically it has been nothing but toil and labor, and I can well say that in my seventy-five years I have not had four weeks of actual pleasure. It was the eternal rolling of a stone that always wanted to be lifted anew."

In his lecture at the TU Ilmenau Citizens' Campus, Dr. Friedrich Meier traces the long, eventful life of Goethe, whose words bear witness to a suffering man. Friedrich Meier, former head physician at the Thuringia Clinics in Rudolstadt, has made it his mission to trace the habits and medical characteristics of historical personalities.