Katharina Elisabeth Goethe

Katharina Elisabeth Goethe
Portrait by Georg Oswald May (1776)
Born	Katharina Elisabeth Textor 19 February 1731 Frankfurt am Main
Died	13 September 1808 Frankfurt am Main

Katharina Elisabeth Goethe, known as "Frau Rat" (19 February 1731 - 13 September 1808) was the mother of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

She was born and died at Frankfurt am Main, and was a daughter of Johann Wolfgang Textor, a prominent citizen of Frankfurt. She married Johann Kaspar Goethe, on 20 August 1748, and had four children by him. She was a woman of exceptional intellect, marked individuality, and a joyous cast of mind, as evidenced by her letters, and in the frequent references to her found in the works of her son, upon whose intellectual development she undoubtedly exerted a remarkable influence.

She was made the heroine of the work by Bettina von Arnim entitled Dies Buch gehört dem König (1843), and is one of the central figures of Karl Gutzkow's play, Der Königsleutnant.

Much of her correspondence has been published in Goethe's Mother, Correspondence of Catharine Elizabeth Goethe with Goethe (Leipzig, 1889). Her letters to the Duchess Anna Amalia, the mother of Goethe's patron Grand Duke Karl August, were published at Weimar in 1885.