Goethe's ballads

The most important ballads of Goethe

• Almost every student knows the first lines of the ballad "Der Erlkönig", one of Goethe's most famous ballads, by heart.
• "Who rides so late through night and wind? / It's the father with his child / He's got the boy in his arms / He's holding him securely, he's keeping him warm. "The first lines outline the initial situation very well. The child, which the father is holding in his arms, sees a figure - the Erlkönig - who scares him incredibly and immediately talks to him. But the father can neither see nor hear the Erlkönig and tries to calm his child down - it is only fog trails and the rustling of the leaves. However, when the Erlkönig reaches for the child, the father realizes the seriousness of the situation and tries to ride faster, but reaches the courtyard too late - the child is dead in his arms.
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• Many literary scholars have different interpretations ready what the Erlkönig is. The most common opinion, however, is that the Erlkönig is either death or part of a hallucination.
• "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" is a ballad which, along with other well-known ballads by Goethe and Schiller, was written in the so-called ballad year 1797.
• The ballad, which is often treated in school, is about a sorcerer's apprentice who is alone in the master's workshop. Bursting with arrogance, he transforms a broom into a servant and is very proud at first. But soon the situation gets out of hand and he is no longer in control of the servant. Then the master comes back and transforms the servant back again, just in time before the situation escalates.


Recognize characteristics of ballads

Ballads are called a special form of poetry. All ballads contain ...

• the interpretation and morality is also quite clear here: arrogance comes before the fall.
• "The God and the Bajadere", another ballad by Goethe, which was written in the ballad year, is about the young Bajadere who works as a dance girl, often known as the easy girl was.
• The god becomes human in this ballad and descends on earth. There he meets the Bajadere, with whom he experiences a wonderful night. She immediately falls in love with the god, whom she does not recognize as such in his human form. But the next morning he is dead. While the corpse is cremated in a death ceremony, the Bajadere loves to throw herself into the flames. So impressed by this gesture, the god shows himself, saves the Bajadere and redeems her by ascending to heaven with her.

Further ballads of Goethe

• Two more ballads were written by Goethe in the ballad year 1797. First "The Bride of Corinth" and then "The Treasure Digger", which makes it clear that money does not make you happy, but that it is important that you enjoy your life.
• The ballad "The Fisherman" from 1779 is about a fisherman to whom a mermaid appears while fishing on the bank and lures him into the depths. Driven by her words and the beautiful appearance, he descends and dies.
• In the "dance of death", a ballad from 1813, the undead rise from their graves and gather.
• In addition, Goethe wrote the lesser-known ballads "The King in Thule", "The Legend of the Horseshoe", "The Unfaithful Boy" and the "Legend".
• Many of Goethe's poems can also be interpreted as ballads, depending on which definition of the ballad is followed.
• A ballad is usually a very long, i.e. multi-stanza poem with a narrative structure. Typically ballads, the subject matter of Goethe's ballads is usually a fairytale, ancient one story or contemporary legends such as "Der Erlkönig".
• Basically, the ballad unites all three literary genres - prose, the Poetry and the drama.