Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
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Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (in German, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre) was a 1795 novel by Goethe. While his The Sorrows of Young Werther, his breakthrough success the previous year, featured a hero driven to suicide by despair, the hero of this novel went through quite the opposite: a journey of self-realization that led to an actualized adulthood. The story centers upon Wilhelm's attempt to escape the restrictions placed upon his life and find life as a writer and actor.
Stories of this kind became very popular, and later books created upon this pattern are called Bildungsroman (stories of growth).
Goethe wrote the sequel Conversations of German Refugees and its sequel Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (Wilhelm Meister's Travels), in 1821.