PROPYLÄEN – Discovering Goethe’s Life Anew

How did Goethe live? What inspired him? Who did he correspond with, and what can we learn from his diaries and recorded conversations?

The long-term project PROPYLÄEN. Research Platform on Goethe’s Biographica offers new ways to explore the life and works of one of Germany’s most influential writers – grounded in scholarship, richly connected, and freely accessible to all.

Since 2015, PROPYLÄEN has been part of the Academies Programme of the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities, with a planned duration of 25 years (2015–2039). It is a collaboration between the Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar (Klassik Stiftung Weimar), the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig, the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz with its Digital Academy, and the Freies Deutsches Hochstift in Frankfurt am Main.

The project has two main goals:

1. Creating a digital research platform – Bringing together the extensive, carefully documented sources on Goethe’s life, works, and influence into one searchable, interconnected, and open-access resource for researchers and the wider public.
2. Continuing and completing key scholarly editions – This includes:
• Goethe’s Letters (GB)
• Letters to Goethe (RA) – with registers expanded to include full texts
• Goethe’s Diaries (GT)
• Goethe’s Encounters and Conversations (BuG)
  

The platform unites the data from these four major editorial projects, making them freely available under a CC BY 4.0 licence wherever possible. Printed editions (de Gruyter, Metzler/Springer) ensure continuity with the long-standing editorial tradition.

By integrating these exceptional biographical records, PROPYLÄEN creates an unparalleled foundation for philological, philosophical, intellectual, cultural, and historical research into the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

The project’s work takes place at two locations: the Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar and the Freies Deutsches Hochstift in Frankfurt am Main. At both sites, scholars work side by side to make Goethe’s life and legacy accessible – comprehensively, sustainably, and for generations to come.

Further Information

PROPYLÄEN – Project Website and Editions (Klassikstiftung)

Research platform: Goethe's Biographica

PROPYLÄEN – Project Team members (Klassikstiftung)

This research project is part of German Academies' Programme which is the largest long- term research Programme in the humanities and cultural studies in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Contact

Prof. Dr. Daniel Fulda:
daniel.fulda@germanistik.uni-halle.de

Dr. Yvonne Pietsch:
yvonne.pietsch@Klassik-Stiftung.de