FAUST.

Exactly 250 years ago, in 1775, Goethe was invited to the court in Weimar by Duke Carl August. To mark this significant anniversary, the cultural city of Weimar is dedicating the theme year 2025 to Goethe’s most famous literary work: Faust. In this drama, Goethe tells the story of the aging scholar Faust, who, in his quest for ultimate fulfillment, turns to mysticism and magic, and enters into a pact with Mephisto—only to be torn apart by desire and moral decay.

At the Bastille, illuminated for Genius Loci Weimar 2025, the interplay of literature and reality becomes tangible. It was here that the maidservant Johanna Catharina Höhn likely spent her final days in a prison cell—for in 1783, the court official Goethe voted in favor of executing the convicted infanticide.

This real-life case stands in direct relation to the "Gretchen tragedy," the emotional centerpiece of Faust I. The pious Gretchen, seduced and abandoned by Faust, kills their child—her literary fate rendered by Goethe as a deeply moving tragedy. And yet, when it came to the 'real' Gretchen, Johanna Catharina Höhn, the young Goethe delivered nothing less than a sentence of death.

Goethe’s Faust penetrates the paradox of human existence: the insatiable desire for fulfillment, the fragile boundaries of morality, and the inevitability of guilt. These themes come to life in the infamous Walpurgis Night, where Faust, in a frenzy of ecstatic intoxication, tries to escape human reason—only to be overtaken by agonizing remorse. In this surreal night filled with mystical creatures and diabolical pacts, Goethe dismantles the binary of good and evil—embodied in the enigmatic Mephisto, who “always wills the Evil, yet always works the Good.” This insight into moral ambiguity stands in stark contrast to the clear-cut legal judgment rendered by the historical Goethe.

The walls of the Bastille are more than a mere backdrop: within their stones lies the question of personal guilt and societal responsibility, of the boundary between good and evil. They raise a pressing question—what if the tragedies of Gretchen and Höhn are not merely historical anecdotes, but mirrors of our present time?

In today’s world, the fatal Faustian hedonism seems once again ignited by Mephisto—this time in the guise of populists of all stripes, gaining momentum and resonance across the globe. Perhaps the true pacts with the devil are not the ones we willingly sign, but those we silently accept?