Faust. Ein Fragment. Ächte Ausgabe. Leipzig, G. J. Göschen, 1790.
Title-page and 168 pp. Small octavo (155 × 88 mm). Wine-red morocco signed by G. Jebsen, Hamburg, c. 1900, with triple gilt fillet frames to the covers, a richly gilt floral spine, green morocco doublures and lavish gilt dentelle tooling (a pristine copy, text and binding alike exceptionally fresh).
The first Faust to reach the public.
The genuine separate issue (Hagen's "Ächte Ausgabe"), the original and scarcer D° state, distinguished by the repetition of the last three lines of p. 144, the passage beginning "Der ganz allein," at the head of p. 145. Title-page and 168 pp. Without engraving, and lacking the sheet-signature "Goethe's W. 1.–8. B." found on the copies later made up from Schriften sheets. The edition appeared in April 1790 in some 4,000 copies, of which 3,000 formed Volume 7 of Goethe's Schriften and 1,000 were issued separately; the present copy is one of the 1,000 Einzeldrucke [Sutherland, Bodleian Library Record IX/1].
This is the first Faust to reach the public, the work that would occupy Goethe from youth to old age. The title is exact. Faust enters print not as a finished tragedy but as Ein Fragment, a public form of incompletion. The Fragment preserves the work as it stood before the Dedication, the two prologues, the fully articulated pact and wager, the Walpurgisnacht and the dungeon scene were added to give the 1808 Faust I its architecture [Henning, Faust-Variationen, the scene-by-scene comparison; Seuffert 1882]. The 1790 Fragment is therefore not merely an earlier state superseded by the 1808 Faust I, but the form to which the history of the work must return. Goethe later told Schiller he had resolved to reopen his Faust, to dissolve what had already been printed and arrange the material anew [Goethe to Schiller, 22 June 1797]. This Fragment is the printed body he had to reopen to make the modern Faust possible.
Gustav Jebsen of Hamburg bound this copy in wine-red morocco with green doublures and lavish dentelle work; Helma Schaefer characterizes the Hamburg binding culture Jebsen represents as one of "complete passion and precision," devoted to objects "beautiful, valuable, and lasting" [Schaefer, Einbandforschung 33 (2013)]. The copy thus unites the earliest printed Faust with a later collector's care.
PROVENANCE
The Heribert Tenschert Collection.
REFERENCES
Goedeke IV/3, 611, 2; Hagen 204; Meyer 362; Kippenberg I, 2377; Hirzel A 165/66; Brieger 670; Wilpert/Gühring 42.
Bernhard Seuffert, Faust. Ein Fragment (1882); Goethe to Schiller, 22 June 1797; Helma Schaefer, "Ein Dedikationsband für Hamburg," Einbandforschung 33 (September 2013), pp. 4–6; Rohde, Valk & Mayer (eds.), Faust-Handbuch (Metzler, 2018); Hans Henning, Faust-Variationen. Beiträge zur Editionsgeschichte; D. M. Sutherland, "Early Editions of Goethe, Schiller, and Wagner," Bodleian Library Record IX/1.
