Society and the Sources of Legality in Goethe’s Die natürliche Tochter 9 Society and the Sources of Legality in Goethe’s Die natürliche Tochter Matthew Bell King’s College London Abstract: This paper presents a reading of Goethe’s problematic play Die natürliche Tochter (1803) in terms of the law-the specific ways in which French inheritance law treated illegitimate children before and during the Revolution, the legal status of the lettres de cachet, and the more general and ideological terms in which Goethe conceived of the law� Goethe’s source material was the memoirs of Stéphanie Louise de Bourbon-Conti� The most striking change Goethe made to the source material was to recast the husband forced upon her as a respectable bourgeois lawyer, and not a greedy minor royal official as he is in the memoirs. This shift and the play’s ending- in which the heroine Eugenie marries the lawyer and thus renounces her claims to high aristocratic lineage-have given rise to a tradition of reading the play as a celebration of the bourgeois legal sphere� This paper argues that the play is only weakly committed to bourgeois notions of legality and that ultimately it favours a proto-conservative theory of the law and legitimacy� Keywords: Johann Wolfgang Goethe, French Revolution, law, illegitimacy, conservatism, justice on stage This article aims to provide a commentary on some overlooked legal issues in Goethe’s play Die natürliche Tochter , 1 which relate to French inheritance law before and during the Revolution and the debate concerning the royal arrest warrants known as lettres de cachet � 2 The article will argue that Goethe’s interest in the subject matter of the play stemmed in large part from his long-standing concern with the political question of where the law comes from and how it is justified. It may seem obvious to say that for Goethe the law was an expression of social forces: for Goethe, laws are made and enforced by social actors in particular social contexts; the law certainly does not derive from the popular will, as argued by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, or from the natural rights posited by Hugo 10 Matthew Bell Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf and many eighteenth-century jurists� However, the social constitution of the law was important for Goethe in a peculiar ideological sense� While scholarship has rightly been concerned with the play as a vehicle for Goethe’s thinking about the French Revolution and as a reflection of his anti-revolutionary politics, it has not fully recognized the elements of the political ideology that underpin that attitude, in particular Goethe’s views on the sources of legality and what role the law plays in good government� In examining the social constitution of the law and its political meaning, the article will also seek to shed some legal light on the ending of the play, with its ostensible alliance of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, as interpreted by Nicholas Boyle (see Boyle 784)� Die natürliche Tochter shows the law in action and reflects on its operations in two salient ways. The first is the infamous lettre de cachet , the legal instrument that condemns the heroine Eugenie to exile. The second is the figure of her husband-to-be, the Gerichtsrat , or Parlamentsrat as he is also titled in Goethe’s notes for the unwritten second and third plays in the trilogy� As has been documented by Bernhard Böschenstein, the play draws extensively on one main source, the Historical Memoirs of Stéphanie Louise de Bourbon-Conti (1798), which Schiller lent Goethe in 1799� In one crucial respect, Goethe diverges sharply from his source: Goethe makes Eugenie’s husband-to-be a well-respected legal officer. In Stéphanie’s memoirs, by contrast, the husband forced on her is a minor official of the crown, and Stéphanie portrays him as ill-mannered and avaricious (see Böschenstein 335). By contrast, Goethe’s Gerichtsrat is an officer, though not a judge of course, of one of France’s thirteen provincial appeal courts, and he is reputed to be of good character. It is significant that Goethe chooses to make him a legal officer. First, this associates the husband-to-be with that class of bourgeois regional lawyers and officials that played such an important role in the Legislative Assembly elected in September 1791, marking the beginning of the second and more radical phase of the Revolution� Second, it means that the discussions between Eugenie and her husband-to-be about their marriage can be informed by a sound knowledge of the law and its shortcomings� Third, it gives extra weight to the Gerichtsrat’s view of the legality of the lettre de cachet � The different characters’ reactions to the lettre de cachet are an important part of the action of Acts IV and V of Die natürliche Tochter , and they reveal how social class affects responses to questions of law and legality. The lettre is shown to three characters in turn: the Gerichtsrat, the provincial Governor and the Abbess of a local convent. The trio of characters obviously represents a social configuration, albeit one that is susceptible of different readings. They could represent the three powerful branches of the French state: the law, the administration, and the church� Alternatively, they might represent the three estates: the third estate, the nobility Society and the Sources of Legality in Goethe’s Die natürliche Tochter 11 and the clergy� Nicholas Boyle argues that the Governor and Abbess are both too worldly and self-seeking to help Eugenie (see Boyle 778—79), but it seems more important that both are aristocrats� The Abbess comes from a “hohes Haus” (l� 2518)� The Governor is described as “ein edler junger Mann” (l� 2416)-whether “edel” here denotes moral or social nobility or both, the Governor is certainly an aristocrat, as the role of provincial governor in the French state was the preserve of the aristocracy (see Black 116)� By contrast the Gerichtsrat is a bourgeois, and what nobility he possesses is purely of behaviour and spirit, not social class: he is a man “der Allen edel, zuverlässig gilt” (l. 1733). This difference in social class best explains the three characters’ different reactions to the lettre de cachet � The Governor quickly reads the lettre and gives it back with a hasty farewell: “So kann ich freilich nur beglückte Fahrt, / Ergebung ins Geschick und Hoffnung wünschen” (ll. 2487—2488)� The Abbess’s response to it is not much more forthcoming: Ich muß dich tadeln, daß du wissentlich So manch vergeblich Wort mit angehört� Ich beuge vor der höhern Hand mich tief, Die hier zu walten scheint� (ll� 2564—2567) The Governor’s and Abbess’s responses are far shorter than the Gerichtsrat’s� Whereas he expresses a strong revulsion to the lettre at some length, they accept it quickly and unquestioningly� Rather than waiting to hear an answer to their reading of the lettre , the Governor and Abbess leave the stage immediately, as if they have been spooked by it. They may find the lettre de cachet disturbing, but they also know that it is part of the system of royal power and prerogative by dint of birthright from which they, as aristocrats, benefit. The Governor’s response to the lettre is unenlightening, but his words before he reads it are striking for the negative view he presents of the law in operation� Eugenie explains her situation: she is illegitimate, and her brother wants her out of the way� Though sympathetic to her plight, the Governor stresses the complex obstacles that stand in the way of his helping her: Um Gut und Erbe wird sogleich ein Streit, Um die Person, ob sie die rechte sei, Gehässig aufgeregt, und wenn Verwandte Ums Mein und Dein gefühllos hadern, trifft Den Fremden, der sich eingemischt, der Haß Von beiden Teilen, und nicht selten gar, Weil ihm der strengere Beweis nicht glückt, Steht er zuletzt auch vor Gericht beschämt� (ll� 2466—2473) 12 Matthew Bell What might at first sight appear to be Eugenie’s rights as a natural person-that is to say, an actual human person, as distinct from a juridical person such as a corporate body-in fact boil down to rights over property, or so the Governor avers� Put simply, inheritance is a matter of property law, not human rights� This is where the misery of the law begins� Legal disputes over property arouse strong feelings, hatred even� Paradoxically, however, because the dispute is ultimately about money, and not about a natural person’s rights, human feelings are disregarded� Worse still, any neutral parties making evidential depositions to a court, such as proofs of identity, may find themselves subject to legal challenge. As a result, the law is usually powerless to resolve such cases� Accordingly, the Governor, though professionally tasked with enforcing the outcomes of legal cases, has a very low opinion of the law’s efficacy. The Governor’s position on these matters might seem overly pessimistic or merely evasive-in particular his insistence that cases in inheritance law are usually not resolved smoothly, but instead descend into bitter and unfeeling disputes about property law� However, his argument is borne out by the facts of pre-Revolution French inheritance laws� Before the Revolution, inheritance law was defined largely in terms of the social rules governing the ownership of property: different laws applied to aristocrats, commoners, and serfs, to natives and foreigners, to clergy and laypeople, according to their rights to own property under the law (see Szramkiewicz 60—62)� The revolutionary assertion of basic human rights changed all this� In November 1793, in “a remarkable innovation considering the prejudices of the age” (Tackett 313), the Law of Brumaire Year II gave inheritance rights to illegitimate children� 3 And in January 1794, the Law of Nivôse Year II decreed that all persons, including those born out of wedlock, be treated equally for the purposes of inheritance, with no precedence for men above women or for older above younger siblings (see Szramkiewicz 88—89)� As a result of these two laws, inheritance law became less a matter of socially differentiated property rights and more a matter of fundamental human rights, the rights of a natural person� Notwithstanding his pessimism then, the Governor’s reading of pre-Revolution law is plausible, and it has already been supported by the Gerichtsrat’s admission in Act IV that he has tried hard but not achieved that much: he laments that “Nicht mein Verdienst, nur mein Bemühen war / Vielleicht zu preisen” (ll� 1740—1741)� Presumably he is haunted by a sense of failure because his power to effect change through the law is so limited� Thus both the Governor and the Gerichtsrat agree that the operation of the law is unsatisfactory� Things do indeed look bleak for Eugenie� Society and the Sources of Legality in Goethe’s Die natürliche Tochter 13 As for the lettre de cachet , the Gerichtsrat draws a distinction between two spheres of legality-a distinction which is of great importance for the action of Act V: Nicht ist von Recht, noch von Gericht die Rede; Hier ist Gewalt! entsetzliche Gewalt, Selbst wenn sie klug, selbst wenn sie weise handelt� (ll� 1747—1749) On the one hand, the law, “Recht” operates through the institutions of justice, “Gericht�” On the other hand, the lettre represents a horrific abuse of power: “entsetzliche Gewalt�” As suggested above, the Gerichtsrat embodies a particular phase of the Revolution, when the Legislative Assembly sought to enforce the equality that had been established in constitutional principle by the Constituent Assembly on 3 September 1791� The Legislative Assembly’s most radical policies were the abolition of the monarchy and the civil constitution of the clergy� It might be objected that the play is almost entirely free of such historical specifics. The events of Stéphanie Louise de Bourbon-Conti’s Historical Memoirs that Goethe dramatized took place in 1773, but Goethe makes no explicit reference to any easily pinpointed historical events; the reader is never even told that the country in which the events happen is France� Yet the Gerichtsrat’s appalled reaction to the lettre does appeal to specific and well-known arguments made before and during the Revolution� The lettres de cachet came to be identified with the ancien régime monarchy and were a key prerogative of the crown� They were unchallengeable in law and were thus an expression of the absolutist principle that the king, in intervening directly in his subjects’ lives, might disregard or even contradict the law� The principle was expressed in the Latin formula rex solutus est a legibus : the king is exempt from the laws� Lettres de cachet were abolished by a decree of the Constituent Assembly on 16 March 1790, though the debate about them went back to the 1770s� A notable landmark was a remonstrance of August 1770 by Malesherbes, the President of the Court of Aids� Malesherbes pointed out the abuse of letters by those other than the monarch� For instance, individuals might request lettres de cachet from the monarch in order to have a wayward child imprisoned so that it could not fritter away a family’s fortune� The letters could, moreover, be issued by designated ministers of the crown without the crown’s knowledge� This was the crux of Malesherbes’s remonstrance: there were lettres de cachet in operation about which the king knew nothing and which therefore did not express the royal will in all its majestic wisdom (see Kelly 497)� By contrast, the Comte de Mirabeau, in his best-selling radical essay of 1782, On Lettres de Cachet and State Prisons , made no distinction between legitimate royal letters and illegitimate letters applied for by individuals: for Mirabeau all lettres de cachet were abuses 14 Matthew Bell of power� It is worth noting that Goethe’s play does not tell us how the lettre de cachet came into being-whether it was a result of the king’s changing his mind about recognizing Eugenie, perhaps under pressure from a faction at court, or it was a letter produced without the king’s knowledge by one of his ministers, in misuse of royal power� The play therefore does not exclude the possibility that this lettre de cachet belongs to the spurious type criticized by Malesherbes� The Gerichtsrat, however, makes a quite different point, and one much closer to Mirabeau’s radical essay� The power expressed in the letter is or should be illegal, he says, regardless of whether it was an expression of the king’s wise and beneficent will or not: “Hier ist Gewalt! entsetzliche Gewalt, / Selbst wenn sie klug, selbst wenn sie weise handelt” (ll� 1748—1749)� The Gerichtsrat’s objection to the lettre is clearly based on an argument that the crown must be subject to the law� The violation of the law takes us to the heart of the play’s representation of the sources of legality� Repeatedly and in a variety of ways, the play suggests that the ultimate sources of the law and the justification of legality are inaccessible� The language of fate is ubiquitous: the words Schicksal and Geschick together occur thirty times� Power is referred to in vague and abstract language, again suggestive of mystery: “das Waltende,” “ein Herrschendes�” Vague indications are given of remote or inaccessible sources of power: “die höhere Hand,” “höhere Regionen,” “Unbekannt […] die Mächte.” Power is simply power, undefined and ominous: “die Obermacht,” “die Allgewalt,” “allgewältig” (see Reinhardt 256)� For the Gerichtsrat, this represents a systemic problem: “Des Übels Quelle findest du nicht aus, / Und aufgefunden fließt sie ewig fort” (ll. 1927—1928). It is impossible to identify the source of the lettre , but even if it were possible, so the Gerichtsrat claims, the abuse of power would not stop because it is part of the very fabric of the ancien régime -the principle that rex solutus est a legibus � By contrast to the Gerichtsrat’s radical opposition, and in a strange paradox, Eugenie maintains her strong allegiance to the crown to the very end, despite the fact that the legal instrument that threatens to destroy her is an expression of the crown’s sovereign power, indeed perhaps even its purest expression� The play’s aristocratic supporters of the ancien régime , including the Governor and Abbess as well as Eugenie herself, are in a perplexing situation� They recognize and refuse to criticize the legality of the lettre de cachet , and yet they can say nothing meaningful about the sources of its legality� This brings Eugenie into direct confrontation with her supposed savior, the Gerichtsrat� He quite rightly claims to represent the law and to be able to use it to limit abuses� Yet his power is strictly circumscribed� He is, one might say, a typical representative of the ancien régime bourgeoisie, a class full of intellectual optimism but prevented by its non-aristocratic status from achieving its aspirations� The Gerichtsrat’s Society and the Sources of Legality in Goethe’s Die natürliche Tochter 15 only option is to accept the limitations on his own power and the unintelligibility of the ultimate sources of royal power: G erichtsrat Ein mächtig ungeheurer Talisman Liegt in den Händen deiner Führerin� e uGenie Was ist Gesetz und Ordnung? Können sie Der Unschuld Kindertage nicht beschützen? Wer seid denn ihr, die ihr, mit leerem Stolz, Durchs Recht Gewalt zu bänd’gen euch berühmt? G erichtsrat In abgeschloss’nen Kreisen lenken wir, Gesetzlich streng, das in der Mittelhöhe Des Lebens wiederkehrend Schwebende� Was droben sich in ungemess’nen Räumen, Gewaltig seltsam, hin und her bewegt, Belebt und tötet, ohne Rat und Urteil, Das wird nach anderm Maß, nach andrer Zahl Vielleicht berechnet, bleibt uns rätselhaft� (ll� 2003—2016) The law that the Gerichtsrat represents only has power in the middle station (“Mittelhöhe”) of life, which would appear to designate bourgeois civil society� Within this domain the law can regulate uncertainty (“des Lebens wiederkehrend Schwebende”) with full rigor (“gesetzlich streng”)� But at the higher levels of society other rules seem to apply, rules that cannot be measured by normal standards, rules that deal out life and death arbitrarily, for instance by means of lettres de cachet � In passing we can note a parallel with Goethe’s “Märchen,” another reflection on the Revolution, in which the Princess Lily, who in one of her manifestations represents the French crown through its symbol, the fleur de lis , lives with a paradoxical curse and blessing: any living being she touches dies, but her touch can also bring the dead back to life, and she has absolutely no choice in the matter� As the Gerichtsrat states of the lettre de cachet , it “belebt und tötet, ohne Rat und Urteil” (l� 2014)� The Princess Lily’s touch can thus be read as her own magical lettre de cachet -a irrational and arbitrary power over life and death� Eugenie and the Gerichtsrat represent a conflict between his well-regulated bourgeois sphere and her royal sphere that is impenetrable and gifted with great but ambivalent powers� But the contrast between the bourgeois and royal spheres does not in fact play out quite so clearly in favor of the bourgeoisie� Eugenie asks the Gerichtsrat how, and specifically by what power of his social standing, he could protect her against the lettre de cachet � His answer, unsurprisingly, is a legal one: 16 Matthew Bell e uGenie Bist du in deinem Hause Fürst? G erichtsrat Ich bin’s! Und jeder ist’s, der Gute wie der Böse� Reicht eine Macht denn wohl in jenes Haus, Wo der Tyrann die holde Gattin kränkt, Wenn er, nach eignem Sinn, verworren handelt; Durch Launen, Worte, Taten, jede Lust, Mit Schadenfreude, sinnreich untergräbt? Wer trocknet ihre Tränen? Welch Gesetz, Welch Tribunal erreicht den Schuldigen? Er triumphiert, und schweigende Geduld Senkt nach und nach, verzweifelnd, sie ins Grab� Notwendigkeit, Gesetz, Gewohnheit gaben Dem Mann so große Rechte; sie vertrauten Auf seine Kraft, auf seinen Biedersinn� - Nicht Heldenfaust, nicht Heldenstamm, Geliebte, Verehrte Fremde, weiß ich dir zu bieten! Allein des Bürgers hohen Sicherstand� Und bist du mein, was kann dich mehr berühren? Auf ewig bist du mein, versorgt, beschützt� Der König fordre dich von mir zurück; Als Gatte kann ich mit dem König rechten� (ll� 2189—2208) In arguing for a bourgeois, domestic form of law that is impervious to the power of the crown, the Gerichtsrat exposes a paradox in his own thinking� He starts by arguing that a woman has no recourse to law for bad treatment by her husband� This is the principle that at the point of marriage a woman’s legal status is entirely subsumed under her husband’s, so that for instance a wife may not take legal action without her husband’s permission (see Tunc 1066—67)� As a wife has no independent legal existence, she cannot be targeted by the crown� However, the Gerichtsrat’s argument turns out to have an unintended consequence that works against him� Eugenie fully understands his exposition of the subsumption of a wife’s rights under her husband’s and is alarmed by it, because it threatens to make her merely his “creature,” his chattel or possession: “Ich fühle mich als dein Geschöpf und kann / Dir leider, wie du wünschest, nicht gehören” (ll. 2218—2219). So, whilst the Gerichtsrat might offer her protection from the crown, in her eyes he can do so only by replacing the crown’s tyranny with his own, which will leave her no better off than before. The law of bourgeois civil society cannot solve her predicament because it fails to grant autonomy to wives� Society and the Sources of Legality in Goethe’s Die natürliche Tochter 17 When Eugenie does eventually accept the Gerichtsrat’s offer of marriage, she does so on her own terms� She will not consummate the marriage, thus rejecting a central pillar of the institution of marriage� She will go into hiding at the Gerichtsrat’s rural estate, so removing herself from bourgeois civil society and the operation of its laws. In response to her demands, at first he seems to acknowledge his powerlessness as an officer of the law: “In diesem wicht’gen Fall was soll ich sagen? ” (l� 2931)� Thinking his way through the conundrum, he arrives at a reversal of the model of female dependence he had set out in Act IV� Whereas in law the husband is the master in his own home, or the “Fürst” as Eugenie puts it in her aristocratic way, the Gerichtsrat now promises to be subject to her: “Deinetwillen / Wünsch’ ich zu leben, du gebietest mir” (ll. 2940—2941). Thus, the final compact between bourgeoisie and aristocracy by no means represents Eugenie (or even Goethe) accepting the claims of the bourgeoisie as preeminent, as is argued by Boyle (783—84)� On the contrary, the Gerichtsrat may be the superior partner de jure , but Eugenie is the superior partner de facto , as if the bourgeoisie were still bound by the law but the aristocracy not so� Moreover, the terms she sets for the marriage threaten to undermine its very basis; their marriage is the hollow shell of legality, emptied of any human sentiment� While it remains unconsummated, the marriage is exposed to the risk of legal annulment, but because Eugenie will hide incognito at the Gerichtsrat’s country estate, she will be beyond the reach of the law and therefore safe from the threat of annulment, in practice at least� In securing these terms, she carves out a space of self-determination outside the laws that govern marriage in bourgeois civil society� The language of the play invites the reader to think of the compact between bourgeoisie and aristocracy as a partnership of equals, in which both will practice renunciation, for instance in Eugenie’s final proposal to the Gerichtsrat: “Nun sei’s gefragt: Vermagst du, hohen Muts, / Entsagung der Entsagenden zu weihen? ” (ll� 2887—2888)� The compact between bourgeoisie and aristocracy also seems to confirm a worry voiced by the King in Act I, namely that the ancien régime ’s traditional social hierarchy is dissolving, with the aristocracy increasingly taking on bourgeois forms of life and the bourgeoisie aspiring to aristocratic power: “O diese Zeit hat fürchterliche Zeichen, / Das Niedre schwillt, das Hohe senkt sich nieder” (ll� 361—362)� However, this rhetoric of equality and balance is by no means the whole picture, and whatever the play does, it does not signify Eugenie’s (or Goethe’s) “transfer of allegiance” from the nobility to the middle-class (Boyle 784)� The Gerichtsrat accepts Eugenie’s terms without any negotiation, without asking for any concessions of his own� He is as submissive towards the nobility as Wilhelm in Books VII and VIII of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre , in which Wilhelm meekly accepts Lothario and the other members of the Tower Society as his superiors� It seems that the Gerichtsrat 18 Matthew Bell accepts Eugenie on such unfavorable terms in part because of her beauty and aristocratic lineage, which combine to make her a goddess in his eyes� In part it is his fateful acknowledgement that his decision whether to propose to her was not amenable to everyday rationality-the kind of rationality that governs the operation of the law in bourgeois society� This irrationality guided his original decision to propose to her in Act IV scene I: Was geschehen soll, Es wird geschehn! In ganz gemeinen Dingen Hängt viel von Wahl und Wollen ab; das Höchste, Was uns begegnet, kommt wer weiß woher� (ll� 1860—1863) 4 Decisions of this higher kind are simply inexplicable� Two aspects of this passage deserve comment� First, it is a signature of Goethe’s thinking that there are sources of meaning and action that are unintelligible and inaccessible to reason, to our “Wahl und Wollen�” This notion appears in several areas of Goethe’s thought� His theory of nature supposes that there is a source of life that is hidden from human perception� 5 In poetics, genius is an unconscious and impenetrable source of creativity� 6 In politics, momentous decisions often come about spontaneously, and not by reason� 7 Second, it is surely no coincidence that the Gerichtsrat’s distinction between “ganz gemeine Dinge” and “das Höchste, / Was uns begegnet” echoes the organization of the social world of the play into two separate spheres: the spheres of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy, and the corresponding legal domains of civil society and the absolute royal power of rex solutus a legibus � Both legal and social hierarchies are expressed in the language of “das Große” or “das Hohe” on the one hand and “das Niedre” on the other� 8 In accepting a decision-making role for the higher and the non-rational, the Gerichtsrat is also, by metaphorical extension, accepting a role for the aristocracy and for absolute royal power� Goethe’s own prosaic view of the question of ultimate legality was formed during his doctoral studies in Strasbourg, and he maintained the same view throughout his life� The only real source of legality was secular and military power, 9 and all legislative power was vested in a state’s ruler: “omnis legislatio ad Principem pertinet” (“all legislation is the domain of the prince”, MA i/ 2, 555)� 10 He was, of course, deeply skeptical about the law as a branch of academic study and as a practice� His experience of administering the Duchy of Sachsen-Weimar taught him that the power of the executive was much more important to the health of a polity than was the quality of its laws� His own views were very much aligned with the words he gave to the wise and well-read Baroness in the frame narrative of the Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten : “denn so komme auch in einem Society and the Sources of Legality in Goethe’s Die natürliche Tochter 19 Reiche alles auf die exekutive Gewalt an; die gesetzgebende möge so vernünftig sein, als sie wolle, es helfe dem Staate nichts, wenn die ausführende nicht mächtig sei” (MA IV/ 1, 516)� Whilst Die natürliche Tochter does give space to the Gerichtsrat’s radical critique of lettres de cachet , its imagery and its strange conclusion lend stronger support to an aristocratic, top-down worldview, in which a mysterious royal sovereignty is the ultimate source of all legality� Notes 1 Where possible, Goethe’s works are cited from Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens (“Münchner Ausgabe”), in the form: MA with volume and page numbers� Line numbers are given for longer poems and verse dramas� Texts not in MA are cited from Goethes Werke im Auftrage der Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen (“Weimarer Ausgabe”), in the form: WA with section, volume and page numbers� References to Die natürliche Tochter are from MA VI/ 1, 241—326, with line numbers only� 2 Lettres de cachet served a number of purposes, of which arrest and imprisonment were the most controversial� 3 The rights were circumscribed. The offspring of adulterous unions could only inherit at one third the rate of other children, and illegitimate children could only inherit if they were recognised by their father� No legal challenge to recognition was allowed� See Darrow 112� 4 The Monk offers a similar response when Eugenie asks him to decide whether she should accept the Gerichtsrat’s proposal: “e uGenie Was sagt nun dir das Herz? verstummt es noch? / M önch Es schweige, bis der prüfende Verstand / Sich als ohnmächtig selbst bekennen muß” (ll� 2724—2726)� 5 See for instance the references to a mysterious source of all life in the Urfaust (MA I/ 2, 136, l. 103), and the unfinished “Prometheus” drama (MA I/ 1, 674, ll� 200, 206—209)� 6 See for instance Goethe to Schiller, 3-4 April 1801 (WA IV, xv, 212), and Goethe’s conversation with Dorothea Veit, October 1794 (Grumach and Grumach IV, 103)� 7 See for instance Friederike’s threat to the Amtmann in Die Aufgeregten , Act IV, scene viii (MA IV/ 1, 177—78), and the conversation between Goethe and Gore in Belagerung von Mainz (MA XIV, 546—49)� 8 For instance, ll� 82, 361, 2069, 2300� 9 See the passage in Dichtung und Wahrheit on Goethe’s (non-extant) doctoral dissertation “De legislatoribus” (MA XVI, 506)� 10 On the dissertation in the wider context of the young Goethe’s politics, see Wilson 196� 20 Matthew Bell Works Cited Black, Jeremy� Eighteenth-Century Europe, 1700 - 89. 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