It is a question what Goethe really thought about the Germans ?--But about many things around him he never spoke explicitly, and all his life he knew how to keep an astute silence--probably he had good reason for it.

It is certain that it was not the "Wars of Independence" that made him look up more joyfully, any more than it was the French Revolution,--the event on account of which he RECONSTRUCTED his "Faust," and indeed the whole problem of "man," was the appearance of Napoleon.

There are words of Goethe in which he condemns with impatient severity, as from a foreign land, that which Germans take a pride in, he once defined the famous German turn of mind as "Indulgence towards its own and others' weaknesses." Was he wrong?
it is characteristic of Germans that one is seldom entirely wrong about them.
The German soul has passages and galleries in it, there are caves, hiding-places, and dungeons therein, its disorder has much of the charm of the mysterious, the German is well acquainted with the bypaths to chaos.

And as everything loves its symbol, so the German loves the clouds and all that is obscure, evolving, crepuscular, damp, and shrouded, it seems to him that everything uncertain, undeveloped, self-displacing, and growing is "deep".

The German himself does not EXIST, he is BECOMING, he is "developing himself".