Faust, DR, a famous dealer in the black art, whose legendary story, a product of the Reformation period, has filled a great place in literature. The historical person who bore the name of Faust lived in the first half of the 16th century, and can be traced in the testimonies of contemporaries from 1507 down to about 1540. He was born at Knittlingen in Würtemberg, or, according to others, at Roda, near Weimar. His parents were poor, but the bequest of a rich uncle enabled him to study medicine and magic at Cracow. From a letter of the Abbot Trithemius of Spanheim, written August 20, 1507, we find an account of him first at Gelnhausen the year before, then at Würzburg, next at Kreuznach, under the name of Georgius Sabellicus Faustus junior. He is described as a vagabond, boastful and pretentious, giving himself out as skilled in necromancy, astrology, magic, chiromancy, agromancy, pyromancy, and hydromancy, able to restore by his own genius the works of Aristotle and Plato if they were lost, and reproduce as often as required all the miracles of Christ. At Kreuznach he was employed to teach by Franz von Sickingen, but was soon obliged to flee for his abominable debaucheries. In 1509 one Johann Faust was pursuing his studies at Heidelberg, where he took the degree of bachelor of theology, and may be the same as the vagabond scholar whom Tritheim denounced. Mutianus Rufus, in a letter to Henri Urbain in 1513, speaks with contempt of one Georgius Faustus at Erfurt, whose follies—as those of a stranger—are of no consequence. Here he seems to have made long and frequent sojourns, if the chronicle first published by Motschmann may be accepted as contemporary evidence; and, moreover, the main elements in his story appear to be already formed. In 1516 we find him at Maulbronn, next in 1525 (traditionally) at Leipzig; in 1528, as Dr George Faust of Heidelberg, he was expelled from Ingolstadt. The physician Philip Begardi, in his Index Sanitatis (1539), speaks of him as having been for some years known as a rogue and a vagabond who gave himself out as philosophus philosophorum, and was highly renowned among his dupes for his great skill, not alone in medicine, but also in chiromancy, necromancy, physiognomy, crystalomancy, and the like other arts. Begardi had not himself seen him, but had many accounts of him. A somewhat ambiguous sentence at the end of the passage about Faust has been interpreted as conveying the fact that he was just dead, and certainly after 1539 we have no positive proofs of his existence, while we know that he was dead by 1544. The Protestant theologian Johann Gast, in the second volume of his Convivialium Sermonum Liber (1544), speaks of having supped with Faust at Basel, where he was attended by a dog and a horse that were evidently demons, and further describes his deplorable end, how the devil strangled him, and how his dead body lay constantly on its face on the bier, although as often as five times turned upwards.
Conrad Gesner of Zurich, in a letter written in 1561, mentions him as a wandering scholar of marvellous powers, long since dead. Next Manlius, a pupil of Melanchthon, tells us in his Locorum Communium Collectanea (1562) that his master knew Faust, who was a native of Kundling in his own country, and described him as 'turpissima bestia, et cloaca multorum diabolorum.' He described further how he had studied magic at Cracow, worked many vain wonders throughout Germany, and was at last carried off by the devil some years before. Joannes Wierus, a pupil of Cornelius Agrippa, in his De Præstigiis Daemonum (1583), speaks of Faust as having been born at Kundling and educated at Cracow, and as having travelled over all Germany, and been imprisoned for his misdeeds in a town in Holland. He tells two stories of him which harmonise with the tradition. According to Widman, Luther in his conversations spoke freely of Faust and his familiar in illustration of the craft and wickedness of the devil, and of the necessity of avoiding all perilous dealings with him. Faust he condemned as the typical infidel and impious man, as well as the mere profligate and the vagabond. Here we see the beginnings of the religious colour which was later to become one of the main characteristics of the story. Count Froben Christoph von Zimmern in his Chronik twice alludes to Faust, confirming the account that he died in an inn during the night at the hands of his familiar when his hour had come. One of the last notices of Faust before the publication of the Volksbuch, which was to fix the form of the legend for all time, is that of Augustin Lercheimer of Steinfelden, a Protestant theologian, and, like Manlius, a pupil of Melanchthon. In his Christliche Bedenken und Erinnerung von Zauberei (1585) we find frequent notices of Faust, and in the minuteness of his details we see the legend full-grown. Again, in two among the seventeen tracts composing the Theatrum de Veneficis (1586) there is distinct mention of Faust. Martin Delrio, in his Disquisitionum magicarum Libri sex (1624), and Philip Camerarius, in his Opera Horarum Subcisi-varum (1658), testify further to his story.
The first literary version of the Faust story was the Volksbuch, published by Johann Spies at Frankfurt in 1587, under the title Historia von Dr Johann Faust, dem Weitbeschreiten Zauberer und Schwartzkünstler, &c., of which but five copies are in existence—one in the British Museum. At the close of the dedication Spies explains that he has printed the book for a warning to all Christians, and tells how he had received his version of the legend from a friend at Spies, evidently a Protestant theologian from the Scripture texts with which it is scattered. The 'preface to the Christian reader' is an admirable sermon upon the damnable consequences of magic and commerce with the devil. The book is divided into sixty-eight chapters, unequally arranged in three parts and a conclusion. The first part recounts, in seventeen chapters, the birth of Faust at Rod, near Weimar, his early studies and bold speculations, his meeting with the devil in a wood near Wittenberg, and his three several disputations in his own dwelling with the fiend, who gives his name as Mephistophiles, when the compact is concluded by which Faust signs away his soul in blood drawn from a vein in his left hand, in return for the services of Mephistophiles for twenty-four years. The fiend now supplies him with the means wherewith Faust and his famulus Wagner are able to live in the greatest luxury. Ere long Faust wishes to marry, but is not allowed, as marriage is an institution of God, and therefore hateful to the devil. Then follow the answers of Mephistophiles to Faust's questions about hell and its ten governments, the form and figure of the fallen angels, the power of the devil, the division of hell called Gehenna, its creation, and the tortures peculiar to it.
The second part contains fifteen chapters relating to the rest of Faust's questions about astronomy and astrology, the causes of winter and summer, the creation of the firmament; after which follow the false answers of the fiend about the creation of the world and the birth of man, and the account of Faust's earliest adventures, including a visit to hell and an account of its hierarchy, a journey to the stars, riding upon Mephistophiles in the form of a horse with the wings of a dromedary, and next to many distant countries and famous cities, as Paris, Naples, Venice, and Rome. Here he torments and bewilders the pope with his strange enchantments, remaining three days invisible in the papal palace, seeing in the pope and his attendants countless sins like his own—shamelessness, audacity, pride, presumption, gluttony, drunkenness, luxury, adultery, and impieties of all kinds. At Constantinople he lives royally in the sultan's palace in the form of Mohammed, returning to Wittenberg after a year and a half's absence.
The third part, in twenty-eight chapters, narrates the conclusion of Faust's adventures, and especially the mighty deeds done by his necromancy at the courts of divers potentates. At Innsbruck he calls up the shades of Alexander the Great and his wife for the delectation of the Emperor Charles V., and afterwards plays many tricks upon his knights—planting a stag's horns on the head of one, devouring a peasant's load of hay together with the horse and wagon, and producing fresh apples and grapes in January; and at carnival time he revels with a company of students, drawing forth wine from a table, and raising Helen of Troy from the shades to gratify their eyes with the sight of her beauty. The story tells further of his debaucheries, and of the seven diabolical succubuses whom he made his concubines; and lastly of his liaison in the last year of his term with the famous Helen of Troy, who bore him a son whom he named Faustus junior. As the end approached he was filled with profound melancholy, seeing hell yawning before his eyes and its unutterable torments, from which there was for him no possible escape, while the wicked spirit now began to torment him with cruelly ironical raillery. On the night on which his twenty-four years expired he was in company with a group of students in a tavern of the village of Rimlich, near Wittenberg, and to them he made a long address expressing his deep penitence, after which he remained alone in his chamber. At midnight a fearful storm arose; horrible hisses as of a thousand serpents were heard, and for a little the agonising cries of Faust with a hollow and suffocated sound; but soon all was still. In the morning the floor of the room was found stained with blood, his brains were spattered upon the walls, and his body was found outside, lying near a dunghill, the head and every member hanging half torn off. Helen and her child had disappeared, and the famulus Wagner succeeded as heir to his master's property. The history ends with an edifying conclusion.
This Volksbuch, which we have seen is not a product of the imagination, at once became popular, as many as four impressions being printed before the close of the following year. A second and corrected edition was published by Spies himself in 1588. In the same year a Low German rendering was published, and a close though somewhat shortened English translation before 1589, the earliest copies not being dated. See the reprint in vol. iii. of W. J. Thom's Early English Prose Romances (2d ed. 1858). Danish, Dutch, Flemish, and French versions were also made—the last not till 1598. A Berlin edition of 1590 added six new chapters, of which one relates to the Leipzig tradition of Faust's adventures in Auerbach's cellar. A version of the book in rhyme, executed by Tübingen students, appeared there in 1588 (printed in vol. xi. of Scheible's Kloster, 1849). At Hamburg in 1599 was issued the second form of the popular book, the enlarged version of Widman (printed in vol. ii. of Scheible's Kloster, 1846). Many additional stories and details are here inserted, and each chapter concludes with an edifying discourse, called a reminder (Erinnerung), which reveals a violently Protestant bias, extorting everywhere a moral against Rome. A later version of Widman is that by the Nuremberg physician, Johann Nicol. Pfitzer (1674; new ed. by A. v. Keller, Stuttgart, 1880), which is chiefly interesting as containing the prototype of Goethe's Gretchen in the citizen's daughter whom Faust wishes to marry, but which the devil will not permit him to do. Yet another version was issued at Frankfurt about the beginning of the 18th century, by 'One with Christian Intentions,' in an abridged and modernised form, which was the basis of many widely diffused chapbook impressions (see
'Des Christlich Meynenden Geschichte Faust's,' in vol. ii. of Scheible's Kloster, from an edition dated 1728). The life of Christopher Wagner (Scheible's Kloster, vol. iii. 1846) was issued in 1593, and originated in the same year an imitation, rather than a translation, in English. It closely follows the form of Faust; Wagner is attended by an ape-shaped attendant devil named Auerban, has similar adventures to his master's, and in the end shares the same fate.
Independent poetic versions of the Faust story also began early to appear. Of these, the earliest, and still the greatest but one, was Marlowe's Tragical History of the life and death of Doctor Faustus. English itinerant players traversed Germany in the beginning of the 17th century, and may have carried with them Marlowe's magnificent tragedy, but the popularity of the theme was so great that it may well have inspired the native imagination also, and given rise to the numberless marionettes in which the story was continuously represented down to the present century. These were seldom printed, and usually largely extemporised, keeping at the same time more or less closely to the theme. See the excellent Ulm piece and others in vol. v. of Scheible's Kloster (1847); also the marionette versions edited by W. Hamm (1850; Eng. trans. by T. C. H. Hedderwick, 1887), O. Schade (1856), K. Engel (1874), Bielschowsky (1882), and Kralik and Winter (1885).
Lessing had projected two versions of the story, one close to the original legend, the other with the supernatural element eliminated; but of these only some fine fragments now exist. Klinger worked the subject into a romance, Fausts Leben, Thaten, und Höllefahrt (1791; translated into English by George Borrow in 1826); and Klingemann published in 1815 his absurd tragedy, 'the hero of which,' says Carlyle, 'is not the old Faust driven desperate by the uncertainty of human knowledge, but plain John Faust, the printer, driven desperate by an ambitious temper and a total deficiency of cash.' Heine's ballet, Der Doctor Faust, ein Tanzpoem, appeared in 1851, and N. Lenau's really poetical epico-dramatic Faust in 1836. The Faust made known to the English public by Henry Irving was a free adaptation of Goethe's Part I. from the pen of Mr W. G. Wills (1885). Librettos for operas were written by Bernard for Spohr (1814), and by Barbier and Carré for Gounod (1859).
Of artistic representations of Faust all the world knows the fine engraving by Rembrandt finished by Van Vliet (1630). Next came those by Christoph von Sichem (1677). The most famous illustrations to Goethe's Faust have been those of Cornelius, Retzsch, Seibertz, Kaulbach, and Kreling. The first of the two ancient mural paintings in Auerbach's cellar at Leipzig represents Faust sitting at the head of the table during a revel; the second, as being by magical art carried out into the street sitting astride a wine-cask. Since Goethe's time many fresh paintings have been added to the two venerable studies.
But it is time to come to the greatest genius who has ever experienced the spell of this ancient legend. 'The marionette fable of Faust,' Goethe says, 'murmured with many voices in my soul. I too had wandered into every department of knowledge, and had returned early enough satisfied with the vanity of science. And life, too, I had tried under various aspects, and always came back sorrowing and unsatisfied.' Goethe had thought out his Faust as early as 1774, but did not publish the first part of his greatest work till 1808, the second till 1831. In his hands it has become a splendid masterpiece, the most really original, moreover, of all his works, although, indeed, in the details of the plot he has invented nothing. It will remain a magnificent dramatic realisation of the elemental struggle between the higher and the lower natures in man. Impossible as it is to compare the English with the German Faust, it is still true that Marlowe's conception of the character has the stronger grasp of the actual. His Faust is always a man, real and living; Goethe's is often idealised and subtilised to the point of being a shadow, or rather a symbol.
See Sommer, in Part 42 of Ersch u. Grüber's Encyklopädie (1845); Düntzer, Die Sage vom Doctor Faustus (1846); Ristelhuber, Faust dans l'Histoire et dans la Légende (1863), to be read with caution; and Dr Ernest Faligan's admirable work, Histoire de la Légende de Faust (1888), with its excellent 'index bibliographique' (pp. 433-452). A complete special bibliography of Faust literature is Karl Engel's Zusammenstellung der Faustschriften (Oldenburg, 1885), containing 2714 numbers.