Der Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Zelter

This study interprets the correspondence between Goethe and Zelter in the period 1799 to 1832 as an autobiographical and anthropological text. From the first letters exchanged to the final years in which posthumous publication of the correspondence is envisaged, the two highly dissimilar partners in this dialogue handle the exchange of letters as a form of its own right. In the author's resistance to the experience of old age and death, the art of living and the art of writing become identical. The question of the extent to which it is possible to transform biology into biography forms the culmination of this correspondence, which from the outset was its own favoured subject.