Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Frankfurt am Main, 1749 – Weimar, 1832) was a German author, poet and playwright.
Goethe is universally recognised as the greatest poet in the German language.

The son of an upper middle-class family, he studied law in Leipzig and Strasbourg, where he became involved in and a leading figure of the "Sturm und Drang" literary movement.
In 1775 he moved to Weimar, having been summoned by the Grand Duke Carl August as his Privy Councillor. He was to spend the rest of his life in this small city in Thüringen that soon became one of the top cultural centres of the time.

Interested in Ancient Greek and Roman culture, Goethe visited Italy twice. These tours were to have a profound influence on his character and stimulated his literary aspirations.
He wrote "Faust", his masterpiece, in 1808. Other works include his novels "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers" (The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1779) and "Die Wahlverwandtschaften" (Elective Affinities, 1810), the tragedy "Iphigenie auf Tauris" (Iphigenia in Tauris, 1785); the poems "Prometheus" (1774), "Römische Elegien" (Roman Elegies, 1789), "Torquato Tasso" (1790) and his essay "Italienische Reise" (Italian Journey, 1829).
Goethe stated that all his works were simply the product of long self-analysis and thus fragments of a single large confession. He had a novel vision, a different and enlightened manner of analysing and interpreting nature, society and history.

During his first tour of Italy in 1786, he visited Venice, where he saw the sea for the first time in his life. It was, for him, an extraordinary experience: on 30th September 1786, as he gazed across the lagoon from the top of the bell-tower in St. Mark’s Square, he saw a vast expanse of water beyond Lido, while to the North and East he could see the Alps.

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