Abstract

The portrait of Goethe proposed in the novel «Lotte in Weimar», written by Mann in the years of his exile 1936-1939, is full of political traits. Someone spoke also of a “distortion” of Goethe, in an anti-Nazi but even anti-German sense. Nevertheless, those political traits are very trustworthy, especially with regard to Goethe’s opposition against the Romantic nationalism of the post-Napoleonic time. The paper addresses these issues considering the parallelism between Goethe’s position in the controversy about Greek mythology , and Mann’s position about the resuscitation of Bachofen endorsed by Alfred Baeumler in 1926. In this light, the poetic and ethical identification of Mann with Goethe exhibits some mimetic as well as ironical aspects. Even Mann’s “parody” of Goethe expresses a political significance