Until 1785, in charge of Public Affairs, Goethe wrote very little, until he left Weimar to live in Italy, from 1786 to 1788.

There he took his distances from the the Sturm und Drang movement (Storm and Stress) that had previously influenced his works. He met Christiane Vulpius in Rome, and they lived together, but he did not marry her before he was fifty seven.

Returning to his motherland, Goethe completed the first volume of Faust, which he had started in 1774. Thanks to Goethe, Weimar became an intellectual center in Germany, where many great authors and composers came to settle down.

This is actually how Goethe met the poet Friedrich Schiller and how they became close friends.

Amongst Goethe's main works:

The Sorrows Of The Young Werther (1774), Iphigenie Auf Tauris (1787), Egmont (1788), Torquato Tasso (1790), Hermann und Dorothea (1797) , Faust (1831). Goethe wrote also a autobiography in four installments.