Pustkuchen und Goethe

In 1821, the publication year of Goethe's »Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre«, the literary public was unsettled by a pamphlet with the same title calling into question not only Wilhelm Meister's path to Bildung but the very values and ideals Goethe himself stood for. Author Friedrich Pustkuchen (1793-1834) combined the criticisms leveled at Goethe by others before him with new arguments designed to topple Goethe from the intellectual and spiritual pedestal his fellow Germans had hoisted him onto. The warring reactions to this attack convey a vivid picture of the regard Goethe was held in in the age of Restauration. The scholarly campaign waged (then and since) against Pustkuchen in the field of Germanic Studies is documented in a lengthy annex. It reveals the Goethe research tradition in a rather curious light.