A Brief Timeline of Faust
The story of Faust is a product of, and a commentary on its times and so is our interpretation of it a product of, and a commentary on our own time. A society subject to God is replaced by one which hopes to prosper despite God. Faust’s ambitions are first a threat to God, then they become what ultimately frees us from God.
| 1440 | Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press. Rise of literacy. |
| 1453 | Revival of Greek learning (fall of Constantinople). Renaissance. |
| 1480 | The historical Georg Faust is believed to have been born in 1480 in Knittlingen. |
| 1483-1487 | Georg Helmstetter enrolled at Heidelberg University and got his Master’s Degree in philosophy in 1487. He practiced astrology and alchemy. |
| 1517 | Martin Luther begins the Protestant Reformation in Wittenberg. |
| 1540 | The historical Faust is said to have died. |
| 1543 | Copernicus shows that Earth is not the centre of God’s Universe (‘beginning of the scientific revolution’). |
| 1575 | The Wolfenbüttel manuscript version of Faust. |
| 1584 | Giordano Bruno further discredits the Christian doctrine of the heavens (he is executed in 1600). |
| 1587 | The chapbook Historia von Johann D. Fausten published in Frankfurt am Main by Johann Spies. |
| 1588 | (1587-1592?) Likely printing of the chapbook’s English translation, The Historie of the damnable life, and deserved death of Doctor John Faustus by ‘P.F.’ |
| 1588-1592 | Christopher Marlowe’s drama “Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus.” |
| 1650 | (1650s to 1780s) Age of Enlightenment/Age of Reason. Decline of superstition. |
| 1687 | Newton’s Principia – ‘the close of the beginning of the scientific revolution.’ |
| 1790 | The first publication of a version of Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s Faust. |
| 1808 | Goethe published Faust. Eine Tragödie. |
| 1832 | Goethe’s Faust II published shortly after his death in that year. |