A Most Mysterious Union: The Role of Alchemy in Goethe's Faust by Steven Y. Wilkerson (review)

Abstract

In a footnote to his introduction, Rittersma conjectures that “it is probably only a matter of time before Disney (similar to its Pochahontas film) brings this historical subject [Egmont] to the screen.” I think we can safely regard that as highly unlikely. In decades past, Egmont might have had a shot at the Classics Illustrated comic book series—after all, Faust made it. For my money, the most compelling instantiation—and repudiation—of the Egmont myth is to be found in Nico Rost’s Goethe in Dachau (2001). As allied troops and SS exchange fire in the night before liberation, Rost rereads Goethe’s Egmont. “[Egmont ist] im Grunde stets der Edelmann geblieben und [hat] die Freiheit, für die das Bürgertum kämpfte, niemals zu seiner Freiheit gemacht, sondern den ‘aufrührerischen’ Bürgern [zugerufen]: ‘Was an euch ist, Ruhe zu halten, Leute, das tut; ihr seid übel genug angeschrieben. . . .’ Ähnliche Ratschläge haben wir in den letzten Jahren ja oft genug gehört! So viele Egmonts haben so zu denen gesprochen, die für die Freiheit kämpften.” The timely untimeliness of Egmont in 1787 turned out to be fleeting. As a framework for unfolding the layers of semantic and narrative reorganization in the time between the beheading of Egmont and Goethe’s play, Rittersma’s mythogenesis has heuristic value. As for the mythical status of Egmont: I am not convinced.