  While engaged in these wordily affair, Jacobi had not abandoned his more humanistic interests. He had already ventured in some minor literary publications in association with his brother Georg while still busy with his commercial practice in Düsseldorf. In 1772, together with Wieland, whom Jacobi had come to know through his brother, he laid out the plans for a German journal patterned after the Mercure de France. The Deutcher Merkur made its appearance soon after, under Wieland’s editorship. Jacobi used the journal as the vehicle of some of his occasional writings until 1777, when his collaboration with Wieland came to an end because of a bitter disagreement between the two men on political issues (Jacobi, 1781, 1782). More significant for Jacobi’s future were two other events that took place in the following years. The first was Goethe’s visit to Pempelfort in the company of Basedow and Lavater. The encounter between the already famous poet and Jacobi that followed was, according to the reports left by both, of a highly emotionally charged nature (Prantl, 1881: 579). Each man made a deep impression on the other. Jacobi’s two novels, Allwill’s Briefsammlung and Woldemar, owe their origin to that event. They were Jacobi’s response to Goethe’s ardent request, made during the visit, that he put in writing all that was closest to his heart. As things turned out, Goethe quickly cooled towards Jacobi, much to the latter’s disappointment, and was later (1779) to prove especially cruel towards him by nailing to a tree (‘crucifying’), to the great amusement of a large company, a copy of a just published new edition of the Woldemar (Stockum, 1957; Sudhof, 1959; di Giovanni, 1994: 52–53).