Johann Peter Eckermann (September 21, 1792 - December 3, 1854), German poet and author, best known owing to his association with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was born at Winsen in Hanover, of humble parentage, and was brought up in penury and privation. After serving as a volunteer in the War of Liberation (1813-1814), he obtained a secretarial appointment under the war department at Hanover. In 1817, although twenty-five years of age, he was enabled to attend the gymnasium of Hanover and afterwards the university of Göttingen, which, however, after one year's residence as a student of law, he left in 1822. His acquaintance with Goethe began in the following year, when he sent to him the manuscript of his Beiträge zur Poesie (1823). Soon afterwards he went to Weimar, where he supported himself as a private tutor. For several years he also instructed the son of the grand duke. In 1830 he travelled in Italy with Goethe's son. In 1838 he was given the title of grand-ducal councillor and appointed librarian to the grand-duchess. Eckermann is chiefly remembered for his important contributions to the knowledge of the great poet contained in his Conversations with Goethe (1836-1848). To Eckermann Goethe entrusted the publication of his Nachgelassene Schriften (posthumous works) (1832-1833). He was also joint-editor with Friedrich Wilhelm Riemer (1774-1845) of the complete edition of Goethe's works in 40 vols (1839-1840). He died at Weimar on the 3rd of December 1854. Eckermann's Gespräche mit Goethe (vols: i. and ii. 1836; vol. iii. 1848; 7th ed., Leipzig, 1899; best edition by Ludwig Geiger, Leipzig, 1902) have been translated into almost all the European languages. (English translations by Margaret Fuller, Boston, 1839, and John Oxenford, London, 1850.) Besides this work and the Beiträge zur Poesie, Eckermann published a volume of poems (Gedichte, 1838), which are of little value. See J. P. Eckermanns Nachlaß edited by Friedrich Tewes, vol. i. (1905), and an article by RM Meyer in the Goethe-Jahrbuch, xvii. (1896).

A master of poetry, drama, and the novel, German writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spent 50 years on his two-part dramatic poem Faust, published in 1808 and 1832, also conducted scientific research in various fields, notably botany, and held several governmental positions. George Eliot called him "Germany's greatest man of letters... and the last true polymath to walk the earth." Works span the fields of literature, theology, and humanism. People laud this magnum opus as one of the peaks of world literature. Other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther . With this key figure of German literature, the movement of Weimar classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries coincided with Enlightenment, sentimentality (Empfindsamkeit), Sturm und Drang, and Romanticism. The author of the scientific text Theory of Colours, he influenced Darwin with his focus on plant morphology. He also long served as the privy councilor ("Geheimrat") of the duchy of Weimar. Goethe took great interest in the literatures of England, France, Italy, classical Greece, Persia, and Arabia and originated the concept of Weltliteratur ("world literature"). Despite his major, virtually immeasurable influence on German philosophy especially on the generation of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, he expressly and decidedly refrained from practicing philosophy in the rarefied sense. Influence spread across Europe, and for the next century, his works inspired much music, drama, poetry and philosophy. Many persons consider Goethe the most important writer in the German language and one of the most important thinkers in western culture as well. Early in his career, however, he wondered about painting, perhaps his true vocation; late in his life, he expressed the expectation that people ultimately would remember his work in optics.