Goethe and the controversial Topic of Vaccination Looked into the Goethe Dictionary, also into the World of the 18th and early 19th Centuries

This paper addresses the question of how the vaccination and smallpox discourse is represented in the "Goethe Dictionary". In the course of the paper, it becomes apparent that the group of words that belongs to the respective thematic discourse can probably be located as a whole by means of an internal "dictionary-path". The paper analyzes the language material with regard to its concrete and its figurative, metaphorical word uses. It also shows which important medical advances of the 18th and early 19th century - the variolation and the smallpox vaccine - are reflected in the dictionary entries. Overall, Goethe's position as that of an enlightened vaccination advocate becomes evident. That the smallpox and disease control discourses had such great relevance for Goethe is made clear by the fact that he even included these topics at a significant and central point in his late literary works "Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre" and "Faust II", respectively. This paper primarily employs a linguistic approach, but also includes elements, interpretative approaches related to the fields of cultural and literary studies.