"... that I am both one and double." For Goethe, the fan-shaped Ginkgo leaf symbolized his divided existence as a man and poet. As a sign of his love, which he also sacrificed for the sake of his works, he sent a leaf of the Ginkgo tree to Marianne von Willemer. In the mood of final farewell, he composed that poem which captures the ambivalence of love and art like no other. Siegfried Unseld describes the story of the extraordinary tree, depicting the relationship between Goethe and Marianne von Willemer and the creation of one of the most significant poems in world literature.