Wiederfinden

What it is

This is a page from the Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände, a periodical published by Cotta in Stuttgart and Tübingen, printing Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's poem 'Wiederfinden' with an epigraph from Schiller, dated 30 August 1819.

Why it matters

Before poems like this were collected into books, they often reached readers first through newspapers and magazines. This page shows how Goethe's poetry, part of his later Divan cycle, circulated to the educated public of his time through the publishing network of Cotta, his longtime publisher.

Look closer

• Why might a poem appear in a newspaper before it appeared in a book?
• What does the choice of a Schiller quotation as an epigraph suggest about Goethe's relationship to other writers?
• What does the blackletter type and the newspaper layout tell you about how Germans read poetry in 1819?