Home › Famous IQs › Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Goethe is one of Cox's top-ranked subjects, with an adult-corrected estimate of around 210 in the most commonly cited summaries of her work. His childhood was unusually well documented - both by his family and by Goethe himself in Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth, his autobiography).

His output spans Faust (parts I and II), The Sorrows of Young Werther, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, plus extensive scientific work on color theory (the Farbenlehre), morphology, and botany. His coining of "morphology" as a discipline preceded its biological adoption by half a century.

He served as a minister in the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach for more than a decade, with portfolio over mining, agriculture, and the road system. He corresponded extensively with Schiller, the brothers Humboldt, and Hegel. He remains the central canonical figure in German literature.