Manfred Wenzel, ed., Goethe Handbuch. Supplemente 2, Naturwissenschaften. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2012. 851 pp.

Summary

This volume contains a trove of important information and resources for the scholar of Goethe's scientific works. The first part of the Handbuch includes extensive background information on Goethe's scientific works and is divided according to the main categories of his corpus: morphology, color theory, geology, meteorology, and his more general natural philosophy, together with some miscellaneous texts. Each section is further divided into smaller subsections with articles providing extensive and useful information on Goethe's scientific writings, whether long or short, significant or insignificant. The first part also contains an overview of the Rezeptions- und Wirkungsgeschichte of his scientific publications. Each of the subsections in this overview concludes with a bibliography of secondary sources. The most substantial part of the volume (about four hundred pages) is dedicated to encyclopedic entries relating to all aspects of Goethe's scientific works. The more important entries also include bibliographic sources. The critical apparatus at the end of the Handbuch contains lists of contemporary reviews of Goethe's works, the tables of contents of the various scientific Hefte that he published between 1817 and 1824, the location of specific scientific works within each of the main editions of his collected works (a helpful list since not all editions print all of his scientific corpus), a comprehensive timeline, and a general bibliography relating to Goethe's work as a scientist and to the history of science at the time. The volume also features beautiful, representative color illustrations from Goethe's scientific works.

Given the extensive electronic and online resources available today, one may at first question the usefulness of this volume. After all, we can now easily search Goethe's works electronically and also quickly find general background information through online queries. Once one delves into the volume, however, it becomes quite clear how useful it is, whether to a beginner or to a seasoned researcher. For the beginner, the background essays in each of the categories listed above provide the essential framework to understand the overall history of science at the time. This information often includes what was occurring in the scientific community as well as the context of Goethe's literary endeavors and life circumstances.