@RusA #9857992 I didn't realize until I looked it up, that when Goethe was born in 1749, Frankfurt was an Imperial Free City in the Holy Roman Empire. That means that it administered its own affairs, was represented in the Diet (Parliament), and was subject only to the Emperor himself. Things must have deteriorated quite a lot by the early 1900s to make my dad's family want to leave.
And yeah, most educated Americans know who Goethe is, but I don't think many of us have actually read anything he wrote.
0
@RusA #9857992 I didn't realize until I looked it up, that when Goethe was born in 1749, Frankfurt was an Imperial Free City in the Holy Roman Empire. That means that it administered its own affairs, was represented in the Diet (Parliament), and was subject only to the Emperor himself. Things must have deteriorated quite a lot by the early 1900s to make my dad's family want to leave.
And yeah, most educated Americans know who Goethe is, but I don't think many of us have actually read anything he wrote.