Weimar Travel Guide

The Goethe House is the birthplace and childhood home of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the giant of German literature and a world-renowned writer. Visiting this well-preserved historic residence to remember the great writer is a culturally meaningful stop in Frankfurt that literature lovers should not miss. Goethe is one of the greatest writers in German and world literary history, hailed as a symbol of German literature; his "The Sorrows of Young Werther" and "Faust" are treasures of world literature. In 1749 Goethe was born in this Frankfurt residence and spent his childhood and youth here until he left as an adult—it was here that the young Goethe received a fine education, read widely and began his literary creation, and some of his early important works were born in this house. The residence is a typical, spacious and respectable 18th-century German bourgeois home, carefully restored and furnished as it was in Goethe's time—furniture, decor, library, paintings and household items (the original was destroyed in WWII and later faithfully rebuilt and restored), vividly recreating the Goethe family's comfortable bourgeois life and the environment of young Goethe's growth and creation, as if visitors could touch the life marks of this literary giant's youth. Beside the house is the Goethe Museum, further displaying related artifacts and art of Goethe's era. Visiting Frankfurt's Goethe House, stepping into the home where this world literary giant grew up and remembering his great achievements, is a unique experience of German literary depth.