From a review of a recent biography:
He alarmed people as much as he charmed them, not only by his impatience, his sudden flare-ups, and his unpredictable antics, but by his foul language. In moments of exasperation he would denounce as a shithead any of the great men who had assembled at Weimar—Wieland, Herder, Schiller. The best-remembered line from his first play, Götz von Berlichingen, is the robber baron Götz shouting through the window to the emperor’s messenger: “Tell his Imperial Majesty that he can lick my arse”—otherwise known as the Swabian salute.
(Be forewarned, the author of the review clearly does not like Goethe, and it goes off the rails at the end, having the idiotic audacity to associate Goethe with the Holocaust.)
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