LiteratureLauterbrunnen, October 1779
Between 9 and 11 October 1779, Goethe stayed in the Lauterbrunnen Valley with Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar. He was thirty, already famous for The Sorrows of Young Werther, and travelling through Switzerland for the second time.
The valley narrows around Lauterbrunnen, with meadows on the floor and near-vertical cliffs on either side. The Staubbach drops almost 300 metres from the western wall. Its name means “dust stream”, an apt description of what happens in a breeze: the falling water thins into spray, drifts away from the cliff and gathers again below.
Water and Wind
Within weeks of the visit, Goethe sent Charlotte von Stein an early version of Gesang der Geister über den Wassern, or “Song of the Spirits over the Waters”. The published poem does not name the waterfall, but an early copy by Luise von Göchhausen carries the title Vor’m Staubbach: “Before the Staubbach”.
That distinction matters. No surviving note records Goethe saying that the waterfall caused the poem. The visit is documented, however, and the early title places the poem at the falls rather than relying only on a later resemblance.
Des Menschen Seele
Gleicht dem Wasser:
Vom Himmel kommt es,
Zum Himmel steigt es,
Und wieder nieder
Zur Erde muß es,
Ewig wechselnd.The human soul
is like water:
it comes from heaven,
rises to heaven,
and must descend
to earth again,
forever changing.
Literal English translation by PeakVisor.
The poem follows water through descent, spray, turbulence and calm. Human life moves through the same cycle: the soul is compared with water, and fate with the wind that alters its course. Goethe revised the text before publishing it under its familiar title in 1789.
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From Poem to Music
Schubert returned to Goethe’s poem several times. The surviving score of D. 714, dated February 1821, sets it for eight male voices and low strings. The dark instrumentation gives the music weight, while the divided voices repeatedly separate and come together again.
Visiting Staubbach Falls
A short path leads from Lauterbrunnen towards the foot of the falls. Wind still decides how visitors encounter it: on a calm day the water drops in a narrow ribbon; in stronger air it reaches the meadow as spray.
On the map Staubbach Falls in Lauterbrunnen →