When Goethe married the mother of his nearly adult son on October 19, 1806, to the dismay of Weimar society, he was behind him a crisis-ridden sequence of traumatic events: Schiller's death on May 9, 1805, kidney colics that made his life hell, and finally, on October 14, 1806, the victory of Napoleon's troops at Jena and Auerstedt: Weimar was left open to plunder, death was omnipresent. Never had the possible end of Goethe's life seemed so imminent, and it is said that he wanted to ensure that his wife and son would be provided for in the event of his death. But is this a sufficient explanation for his late marriage? Wolfgang Frühwald demonstrates that it was indeed love that motivated Goethe to take this step—a love that no longer concerned itself with the delicate separation of sexuality and friendship, of civil marriage and sexual gratification. Frühwald succeeds in proving this.