Goethe (surname)

Goethe (also Göthe) is a German surname. It is best known for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). It belongs to the group of surnames derived from given names, in this case given names in Got-, in most cases likely Gottfried (c.f. Götz). Variants of the surname include Göth, Goeth and Göthke, Götke.

The name is comparatively rare; the German phonebook (as of 2013) has 176 entries for Göthe and 168 entries for Goethe; 179 entries for Göth and 28 entries for Goeth; 11 entries for Götke and 2 entries for Göthke.^[1]

List of people with the surname

Members of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's family bearing the surname:

• his great-grandfather, Hans Christian Göthe (fl. 1650s), a blacksmith of Kannawurf, Thuringia, married Sibylla Werner
• his grandfather Friedrich Georg Göthe (6 September 1657 – 10 November 1730), lived in Lyon but in 1685 with the suspension of the Edict of Nantes was forced to move to Frankfurt.
• his parents, Johann Caspar Goethe (29 July 1710 – 25 May 1782) and Catharina Elisabeth Goethe, née Textor (19 February 1731 - 13 September 1808)
• his wife (m. 1806) and former mistress Christiane von Goethe née Vulpius
• their son August von Goethe (born out of wedlock 25 December 1789, died 28 October 1830), and his wife Ottilie von Goethe, née von Pogwisch (31 October 1796 – 26 October 1872).

Other people called Goethe or Göthe:

• Johann Friedrich Eosander von Göthe (1669–1728) — German Late-Baroque architect
• Charles Goethe (1875–1966), American activist
• Bror Geijer Göthe (1892–1949), Swedish artist
• Dieter Göthe (fl. 1950s), East German slalom canoer

People called Goeth or Göth

• Amon Goeth (1908–1946), Austrian Nazi commandant of Kraków-Plaszow concentration camp

References

This page or section lists people with the surname Goethe (surname). If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name(s) to the link.