Wilhelm Meister's theatrical calling

the long version

In 1910 a Zurich pupil showed his teacher a family heirloom, an eighteenth century manuscript that the latter identified as the long lost first version of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1796). During Goethe's first visit to Switzerland (1775), he had met Barbara Schulthess in Zurich. Either at that time or in their subsequent correspondence she asked to examine his novel in progress. As was not unusual in that day, first she and then her daughter made copies of the work before returning it, thus preserving a work that Goethe, in effect, suppressed. At the center of Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung (Wilhelm Meister's Theatrical Calling) stands the theater. In following its youthful protagonist, we are systematically exposed to its many manifestations which characterize its development: from marionettes and child's play through acrobatics, vaudeville and circus down to court theater and, ultimately, modern theater reflecting middle-class, urban life. His work on the novel was interrupted by his journey to Italy in the late 1780s, and after returning to Weimar he abandoned the Calling while preserving much of its material and poetry in the Apprenticeship, where the medium remains the theater while the focus has shifted to the maturation of young Wilhelm. The Calling is no mere early version of the Apprenticeship. It provides much material not found in the Apprenticeship and an entirely different view of the protagonist's family.