Friederike Brion
He first reached Sessenheim in October 1770 and met Friederike there, for the first time, the same month,[1][2] when he was exploring the region on horseback with an Alsatian friend, the medical student Friedrich Leopold Weyland (1750-1785[3]).
His depiction of Friederike, whom he liked most of the parson's three daughters, contains a lot of fantastical additions, but shows the situation vividly and lovingly, mentioning Friederike's slenderness and lightness, her way of walking "as if she did not have to bear any weight", the impression that her neck was almost too delicate to bear her dainty head with its huge plaits, the very direct glance of her serene blue eyes, and her nice snub-nose "searching as freely in the air as if there could be no sorrow in the world".
Some uncertain sources mention a further visit in 1782, when Friederike's older sister Maria Salomea married Gottfried Marx from Strasbourg, who had just become parson in Diersburg (today Hohberg).
They earned their living by selling weaving, earthenware, pottery and handicraft produce and operated a boarding-house for girls from Sessenheim and the village's surroundings who were thought to learn French at a school erected for that sake in Rothau.
[9] The love affair grew on the basis of a general feeling to be moving towards a higher human existence that coined life throughout Europe in those times and made possible an especially liberal intercourse of young people.
[16] The enthusiasm of many for Goethe—among them Johann Gottfried Herder—has been dampened by the impression his behavior had broken the heart of an all-too tender girl, in the case of Friederike Brion.
[17] Willkommen und Abschied and Maifest unite deep inner feelings with the atmosphere out in nature as German poetry has not done that before, since Walther von der Vogelweide,[9] while Heidenröslein most clearly shows how well Goethe knew to follow the character of the popular ballad and, at the same time, most lively and concisely represents the poet's adventure with Friederike.
[18] Friederike was the prototype of the figures of Maria, the sister of the hero of Goethe's drama Goetz von Berlichingen (1773), and of Marie Beaumarchais in the poet's five-act tragedy Clavigo (1774).
