Goethe is written with “von”, it is known that he was a minister and was addressed as “Excellence” in public transport. The young savages of the Vormärz saw him as a prince’s servant and friend of despotism. And it’s true: the freedom of the press worried him because he already anticipated the disinhibition that we experience today in social media. But he was not a haughty aristocrat. In his official functions, Goethe was responsible for human resources, as we would call it today, for a whole cohort of librarians, secretaries, actresses and singers. In his house there were servants, typists and cooks, and Goethe carefully looked after them all; the collection of his letters of recommendation alone would fill a volume of its own.
Two hundred years ago, in 1822, Goethe found the time to give one of his subordinates a great literary performance. Johann Christoph Sachse, then sixty years old, had been a servant in the Weimar library since 1800, which Goethe used intensively, and the contact was close. Before 1800, Sachse had eked out a living first with farm child labour, then in various positions as a servant in aristocratic and upper-class households and had traveled a great deal in Germany in the process.
Sachse was a diligent diarist, which Goethe always liked, and so he turned his early wandering years into a book. It is full of curious adventures and at the same time social reality. You get to know Germany around 1780 from below. The little people are thrown through the old empire because there is no social security. The authorities can fire their staff at the slightest objection. Often a better gentleman beckons in the next town. Sachse’s report shows this in the most colorful abundance, and Goethe was so enthusiastic about it that he downright forced his publisher Cotta to publish the manuscript.
The fine people must be wondering what their servants would have to write
And so Cotta, the Suhrkamp publishing house of German classics, the publisher of Goethe, Schiller, Hölderlin and many others, published “The German Gil Blas or the life, hikes and destinies of Johann Christoph Saxon, a Thuringian” together with a foreword by Goethe. Goethe also included this foreword and other praiseworthy references in his journal “Über Kunst und Alterthum”; he beat the drum for the servant in every possible way. The title set by Goethe alludes to a popular work of world literature, the picaresque novel by Alain-René Lesage, which has been published since 1715. In the foreword Goethe reached even higher: “However, one should not say of any novel, large or small, that there is much ado about nothing here, because one could say the same about the Iliad, a human life deserves even less to be treated contemptuously, because It is obvious that life is what matters in life and not a result of it, and we have to look at the least with respect.”
Gil Blas, Homer: These are the references. At the same time, Goethe knew that he was not presenting a “work of art” but a “work of nature”, a little processed expression of lived life. Herder’s epochal discovery of folk poetry, which had so impressed Goethe in his youth, still resonates here. And he went further: he did not conceal the bulky content of Sachse’s autobiography. The latter does not shy away from drastic criticism of imperious rulers, of the arbitrariness of baronesses, of the habitual injustice of the higher classes. Goethe calls Sachse’s story a “bible for the servants”. And he recommends them to the “upper classes” for edification, “especially if it strikes them: what would it look like if their servants also wrote such confessions?”
The rebellious Saxon had gotten something off his chest. A sarcastic section on “Service remarks” summarizes it: “For example, the servant sometimes discovered the rendezvous too early, sometimes powdered the crepe too much, sometimes heated the room too much or too little, sometimes the bed wasn’t made well or the pot de chambre not properly seated, sometimes woken up too early or too late, sometimes boots and clothes not cleaned well enough and more such accusations, which are sometimes just pulled out of thin air.” The list goes on for a long time, because you can never please the gentlemen.
This bible of the precariat became such a success that the old Saxon earned enough to plan a cure for himself and a sick son at the Bohemian baths – places then frequented by the high European aristocracy. The library attendant emulated his big boss. But the journey he had undertaken in his own carriage in the sweltering heat was so exhausting that he died of a fever shortly after arriving in Teplitz. In letters to friends, Goethe called this turn of events tragic. He publicly wrote an obituary for Sachse, recounting his last journey in minute detail. “Now his legs rest at the feet of the famous hiker Seume” – by the way until today.