r Lili Schoenemann, who inspired many of his
most beautiful songs and reminiscences. The daughter of a rich Frankfort
banker, highly educated by her French mother, young and very beautiful,
blond and graceful, in the enjoyment of all the social advantages of her
position, she keenly aroused Goethe's emotions, while she also was
deeply stirred to see that extraordinary man at her feet. She succeeded
absolutely: Goethe became hers with life and soul, while, at the same
time, he enjoyed with young Countess Auguste von Stolberg, sister of the
two poets, a deep romantic friendship which survived all the storms of
his eventful life. He never saw the countess, whom he nevertheless
addresses familiarly as "Gustchen" and "thou." His correspondence with
her sheds a wondrous light on his soul, especially with reference to his
love for Lili. Lili tried to win him, now paining him by jealousy, now
soothing him by love. At last a formal betrothal was arranged, which was
but the beginning of the end. He tried "whether he could live without
Lili," and went on a journey to Switzerland with Count Stolberg. But he
never forgot her. In a letter to Gustchen he calls her "the maiden who
makes me unhappy without any fault of hers, she with the soul of an
angel whose serene days I sadden!"

Lili Schonemann became later the wife of the Alsatian Baron von
Turckheim, with whom she lived in happy marriage till her death in 1817.
She confessed to her daughter as the true reason of her broken betrothal
to Goethe the revelation made to her by her mother of Goethe's former
relation to Friederike Brion and of his conduct toward her. Lili, though
pure and true to her husband, never forgot Goethe; while the latter, in
his age, confessed to Eckermann that "he had loved her deeply as no one
before or afterward." Lili's biography, _Lili's Portrait_, written by
her grandson, Count Turckheim, is an important chapter in the history of
a cultured, high-minded, energetic, and exquisite womanly character,
loved and lost by the poet-prince of Germany. It is not accidental that
Goethe, distracted by the loss and not knowing where to turn, plunged
into and translated just at that time Solomon's Song of Songs, which he
described in a letter to his friend Merck as "the most glorious
collection of songs of love God ever created." It is also almost
providential that he received, even at that period of regret and
despair, the renewed invitation of Duke Karl August of Saxe