Poet, playwright, novelist, scientist and courtier, Johann Wolfgang Goethe is the best known exponent of German literature and also one of the most representative of the European cultural scene. These pages tell of his long, intense life, his loves, which appear in many of his works, his great friendship with Schiller, and his later years spent in solitude, during which he finished writing Faust, an undisputed masterpiece on which he worked for almost sixty years.