Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born August 28, 1749, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, philosopher, Goethe was a brilliant polymath and is generally considered Germany’s greatest man of letters. His most famous works are the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) and the two-part drama FAUST (1808 – 1832). He died in 1832.