Goethe's and Purkinje's Trail in Mariánské Lázně

1821 - 1823 

The Goethe Trail begins behind the building of the Mariánské Lázně Municipal Museum. The so-called Purkinje Trail branches off from it. Goethe and Purkinje did not meet here in person, but in 1821 Goethe read Purkinje's dissertation on the understanding of vision here (1819). He did not meet Purkinje in person until later. It was through him and Kaspar Sternberg that Goethe's approach to nature was incorporated into the foundations of Czech science and permanently influenced it.

 

Jan Evangelista Purkyně published his dissertation New Subjective Reports about Vision in 1819. Goethe learned about it from Count Caspar Sternberg and spent the following years actively studying it, thoroughly reading and annotating the text. In the age of emerging scientific materialism Purkyně, like Goethe, stood outside the mainstream, for he proclaimed in his work that scientific empiricism alone was not enough - a kind of “exact sensorial imagination” was needed, where the sensory world could not be conceived without the spiritual world. In his dissertation he inferred the properties of the visual system from empirical-psychological and physiological methods (i.e. not by mechanical description). He considered self-knowledge and a sort of self-torture (so-called heautognosis) to be a necessary part of scientific method and he did experiments with the physiology of the eye on himself. He based his work practically on Goethe's Theory of colours (1810), but he kept this fact silent for fear that the academic community would not accept the work because of its reference to Goethe. Goethe was enthusiastic about Purkyně, although he did feel vexation at the deliberate failure to quote his own work. Purkyně visited Goethe in Weimar in 1822 to apologize and explain his position, which Goethe accepted amicably, as these verses show:

In your own eye now look for that 

which Plato knew though he`s long dead: 

In nature the same rules apply 

on the inside as on the outside.

But if all of this confuses you,

Purkyně`s here to help you through. (Tame Xenia, 1827)

 

Mariánské Lázně has preserved to this day much of its character of a town created in the wilderness, and just behind the spa buildings begins a forest with a network of trails. The path leading behind the museum building is symbolically named after the poet and its branch is named after J. E. Purkinje, although the two men did not meet here. Their interconnection of ideas, however, permanently influenced the Czech science of the Czech National Revival. 

 

References

Urzidil, J.: Goethe v Čechách. Příbram 2009, s. 398–403.

MZ

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