On the Origin of the Gretchen-Theme in "Faust"

Title: On the Origin of the Gretchen-Theme in "Faust"
Author(s): Albert B. Faust
Source: Modern Philology, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Nov., 1922), pp. 181-188
Publisher(s): The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/433280

Albert Faust (so coincidentally named) analyzes the story of Goethe’s love for Friederike and compares this to the story of Gretchen, the Kindesmörderin. Friederike Brion was well-known as a kind and gentle mother-like character among her neighbors and those who knew her. She never married, which Faust attributes to either her delicate health in younger years or her caretaking of her parents. She is said to have had a pulmonary condition just as Goethe did as a child. Friederike had been seduced by a Catholic priest and was with child by him, which had deterred Goethe from marrying her. However, Friederike and her sisters always spoke well of Goethe, and her gentleness and benevolence, as well as Goethe’s confession of love for her and regret for never marrying her help to rule her out as the source of Gretchen’s tale.

The more likely candidate, however, is found in a tale separate from Goethe—Maria Flint, a young girl with a Swedish lover who left her. Her parents died before the child was born, according to Faus, from the grief at the loss of the family honor. Thus Maria was subject to the jurisdiction of the town for having an illegitimate child, and she killed her child at the risk of even greater punishment. She was thrown into prison and was set free by Lieutenant Johann Dycke of the Husars, who plotted a plan to release her in the night. She fled but returned some months later, saying she could not go anywhere without fear, and so they threw her in jail again with stronger securement and was killed just at Goethe described. Faust concludes, as Boenigk describes in the essay Faust cites, that Goethe must have heard this story while he was studying in Leipzig.

Faust also looks at one of the hot topics of the time: infanticide. Women at the time were expected to remain virgins until marriage, but it often happened that they would be seduced by a lover of sorts and left with a child. Fearful of the consequences of having an illegitimate child, women sometimes killed their children in the hope that no one would know and thus they would have no consequences. Any woman who killed her child was to be punished heavily by the town, and this was a prominent issue for the people of the 18th century. As abortion is in modern day, infanticide was often a topic that would result in more energy being spent on condemning the woman than helping her. Thus the theme of infanticide, in coincidence with the story of Maria Flint, was on the mind of Goethe in around 1770-1775, when the Gretchen theme was created.

Faust concludes that Friederike is most definitely not the source of Goethe's Gretchen and that Maria is a more likely candidate, but also that neither is fully responsible for the creation of Gretchen. Rather, the story is embedded much more deeply in the themes of the time period and should be examined within this context rather than just in the lives of those Goethe knew. I feel that Margarete is a manifestation of the various love interests of Goethe's life-- perhaps based more on one than another, but who can say which that is?-- in conjunction with the story of Maria Flint and the infanticide theme. Interestingly, Maria is the Italian equivalent to the name "Margarete," although Faust also makes note that Johann, Faust's German name, falls next to Margarete on the calendar.