Johann Peter Eckermann

(1792 - 1854)

Johann Peter Eckermann’s colloquies with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—recounted in Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of His Life—took place during the nine years preceding the German poet, statesman, and playwright’s death at the age of eighty-two in 1832. Eckermann wrote in his preface, “I loved to seize on the import of his words, and to note them down, that I might possess them for the rest of my life.” Appointed Goethe’s literary executor, he compiled the first complete edition of Goethe’s works with F.W. Riemer.