Naked Ganymede and her divine abductor; the almost feminine Apollo of Belvedere; two beautiful naked youths, one of whom places his arm over the shoulder of the other: The artworks in the staircase of Goethe's residence in Weimar are not only ancient classics but also a homoerotic program par excellence. In his poetic work, from the early preference for androgynous figures to the obscene jokes surrounding the "Roman Elegies" and the gender confusion in the "Entombment" in "Faust II," Goethe also engages intensively with the theme of same-sex love. In this biographical work with a focus on the other shore, W. Daniel Wilson reveals a surprising homosexual impulse in Goethe's work, ranging from sublime romantic love to almost pornographic coarseness. Through compelling individual analyses, Wilson demonstrates how.