Until the second half of the 20th century, Goethe's Faust encountered its audience in schools, lecture halls, and literature as a role model, as an active and optimistic hero who takes his fate into his own hands. His restless striving was regarded as a virtue, and his life story as an exemplary personal development, as a productive appropriation of the world, as technical and scientific progress - in short, as happiness. Today, 200 years after the publication of the first part of the Faust tragedy, it is evident that Goethe articulated the now globally valid law of motion of modernity in Faust's verses. Long internalized, this prohibition of rest shapes our everyday behavior. In a world of rapid image changes and the accompanying frenetic rhythms, any pause has become impossible. No moment escapes the need for a break.