A Friendship in Sie

The friendship between Goethe and Schiller is one of the best known in German literature. They addressed each other as Sie. Goethe told Schiller: Sie haben mir eine zweite Jugend verschafft und mich wieder zum Dichter gemacht. You have given me a second youth and made me a poet again. The music writer Graham Johnson notes that Goethe never said du even to Schiller. Goethe did move to du with the composer Carl Friedrich Zelter. This happened in 1812, when Zelter’s stepson had shot himself. In his reply to Zelter’s letter, Goethe addressed him for the first time with the brotherly du.

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