for Germany the era of Goethe, or Classicism proper. CHAPTER XI EMANCIPATION OF GERMAN WOMEN We have shown at length how the cultural, literary, and artistic grandeur of Germany during the Minnesong period was a direct consequence of the high elevation of woman, and due to the worship accorded to her on account of her lofty station. Just so woman was one of the strongest impelling factors in bringing about well-nigh all that was great and good in the second period of Classicism. The world-famed Court of the Muses at Weimar, presided over by Duchess Amalia, "as unique in her way as Frederick the Great was in his," and her circle of noble women, aroused all the poetic power of the genius of Goethe, and later that of Schiller. All the courtliness and elegance of their art, which had been evolved in storm and stress, sprang from their intercourse with noble women, a fact which Goethe again and again frankly confessed, and from which Schiller derived the loftiest inspiration. The ancient Minnesingers' glorification of ennobling love was renewed by Goethe, whose highest ideal of feminine perfection was one illustrious woman, in whom he discovered "all the lofty happiness that man in his earthly limitations calls with divine names," Frau Charlotte von Stein alas! the wife of another man at the same court. She and Shakespeare a strange combination gave Goethe the incentive and stimulus by which were produced his immortal works. This is proved by his statement: "Lida, happiness ever present, William, star of loftiest height, to you I owe all that I am." Goethe's relations with this extraordinary woman, says Scherer, developed in his nature all the tenderness of which he was capable. She was frank and true, not passionate, not enthusiastic, but full of spiritual warmth; a gentle earnestness gave her majesty; a pure, correct feeling, combined with a thirst for knowledge, enabled her to share all the poetic, scientific, and human interests of Goethe. In his numberless letters and fleeting notes to her we find strewn broadcast a thousand germs of the grandest poetry. Her spirit hovers around him everywhere; she possesses him entirely, body and soul; his feelings are expressed constantly in inexhaustible lyrical, frank, and caressing terms, more concise and natural than those in Werther. But the impetuous lover in Werther's Sorrows is here a brother and true friend. He becomes helpful, noble, and good, his own words, eager to cherish his friend, to smooth her pathway through life; his extraordinary and extravagant genius is calm and tempered. Frau von Stein brings forth the pure and religious forces of his nature. His hot blood becomes chastened; he himself calls the higher inner life that grows and strengthens itself within him "Purity," and his poesy, too, becomes Purity realized. The ethereal, ethical world in which his love for Charlotte forces him to live is reflected in his lofty creations of immortal beauty, in his