1803: Ernst Carl Ludwig Ysenburg von Buri - A seventeen-year-old tried to block Goethe's path to Offenbach

There are also many anecdotes about Sophie La Roche, Germany's first female novelist, who took up residence in Offenbach's Domstrasse in 1786. Her grandchildren Clemens and Bettina Brentano, who often visited the tranquil garden city on the outskirts of Frankfurt, also went down in literary history. However, it is almost unknown that Goethe - as a fourteen-year-old, precocious young poet - came into contact with Offenbach as early as May 1764 and received a miserable rebuff. Goethe had applied to Ysenburg von Buri, the seventeen-year-old chairman of the secret literary club "Arcadische Gesellschaft zu Phylandria", for admission.

Goethe's oldest surviving letter, addressed to Ysenburg von Buri in that eventful May of 1764, contains the poet's earliest, extremely revealing self-characterization: "One of my main shortcomings is that I am somewhat hot-tempered. You know the choleric temperament, but no one forgets an insult more easily than I do. Furthermore, I am very used to giving orders, but where I have nothing to say, I can leave it alone. However, I will gladly place myself under a regiment if it is led as one can expect from your insights. Right at the beginning of my letter, you will find my third mistake. Namely, that I write to you as familiarly as if I had known you for a hundred years, but what is the use, for once it is something I cannot break myself of." After pointing out that he was also extremely impatient, Goethe's remarks ended with the sentence: "I beg you to decide as quickly as possible."

The later Offenbach music publisher Johann André, also a member of the "Arcadian Society of Phylandria", was also drawn into the subsequent dispute over Goethe's admission. Goethe had met André in Offenbach, possibly in order to influence the upcoming decision. Ysenburg von Buri then gave André more details about Goethe, which had in turn been passed on to him by a friend: "I learned that he was very devoted to debauchery and many other faults that were unpleasant to me, but which I do not wish to enumerate."

André's reply after this encounter is also remarkable. Goethe had praised his operetta, whereupon André should have interrupted him because this art judge seemed too young to him. André records: "Finally, he asked me to visit him. I agreed to see him as one agrees to something against one's will. But why I had no inclination towards him was simply that he seemed too young to me. He may be fifteen or sixteen years old; for the rest, he is more a good talker than a thorough man."

While a close and friendly relationship developed between Goethe and Johann André in the years around 1775 - during the famous Lili episode - which culminated in André's setting of Goethe's play "Erwin and Elmire", Ysenburg von Buri's relationship with Goethe ended irrevocably on September 1, 1764 with Buri's letter to an unknown member of the "Arcadian Society of Phylandria": "Mr. Goethe is completely silent, and I also hope that he will not contact me again. But should he be so impertinent as to contact me again, I have already resolved not even to dignify him with a reply."

Letters or other testimonies of the now completely forgotten poet Ysenburg von Buri are virtually non-existent. This makes both the purchase and the circumstances under which the "Haus der Stadtgeschichte" was able to acquire a letter from this important figure in the city's history all the more remarkable. Museum director Jürgen Eichenauer discovered the rare letter as an offer in the international autograph trade a few days after Ernst Buchholz, director of the Offenbach City Library, had told the little-known story in a small circle. The mayor in office at the time, Wildhirt, commented: "The art trade had overlooked the regional historical significance of this letter."

The decorative letter, with seal and signature, was written in Giessen on September 28, 1803, without any connection to the dispute with Goethe. Ysenburg von Buri's letter, written to his bookseller Gehra in Neuwied, is more representative of the unsuccessful poet's attempts not to give up his profession even in the last years of his life. While Goethe rose to become the national poet of the Germans, Ysenburg von Buri worked as a captain in the service of the Counts of Wied-Runkel and finally as an officer in the Westphalian-Westerwald infantry. Like the publisher Gehra, Ysenburg von Buri also belonged to the secret order of the Illuminati.