Education
The young Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who studied in Leipzig from 1765 to 1768, fell in love with her in 1766.
The young Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who studied in Leipzig from 1765 to 1768, fell in love with her in 1766.
She reacted rather reservedly to his declarations of love in the beginning. Her parents were kept in the dark about the unfolding love-affair, because a liaison of a girl of Anna Katharina"s plain origin and the son of a Patrician might be seen as unsuitable to Goethe"s station. Anna Katharina appeared to Goethe as a perfect, charming and elegant being.
She liked the love poems which Goethe dedicated to her and which he published as Annettenlieder (songs to Annette).
These poems are considered the first of bigger meaning within Goethe"s oeuvre. Goethe introduced the jurist and later vice mayor of Leipzig, Christian Karl Kanne, who would later become Anna Katharina"s bridegroom, to his sweetheart.
Kanne and Anna Katharina married in 1770. Goethe visited Anna Katharina in 1776, when he had moved to Weimar.