Its most prominent member was
that Fraeulein von Klettenberg, already mentioned, a woman of high
rank, culture, and refinement. To moral beauty of character in man or
woman, Goethe, at all periods of his life, was peculiarly
sensitive,[51] and in the Fraeulein he saw a woman who combined at once
the most winning graces of her sex and the virtues of a saint. For
women of all ages and all types Goethe had always a singular
attraction, and, though the Fraeulein must have discerned that he could
never be a son or brother in the spirit, she was profoundly interested
in the wayward youth in whom she saw a brand that deserved to be
plucked from the burning.
[Footnote 51: _Cf._ his beautiful characterisation of Louis Bonaparte,
King of Holland, in whom he found the embodiment at once of the
Christian graces and of _reine Menschlichkeit_.]
With a kind of half consent Goethe entered into the spirit of the
pious circle; he even attended communion in spite of his unhappy
memories of that sacrament, and was present at a Synod of the Herrnhut
Community to which Fraeulein von Klettenberg belonged. Bound up with
the Fraeulein's religion was a curious interest in the occult powers of
nature from the point of view of their relation to the human body.
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