the subject of "faust" occupied goethe all his life. the name of faust is mentioned in a comedy he wrote in 1769: “die mitschuldigen“. in 1773, when he was 24, he first read the poetry of hans sachs, the medieval german poet. he immediately started to imitate the rhythm of sachs’s poetry. this rhythm is known as “knittelvers”. it had 4 accented syllables in each line and an aabb or abab rhyming pattern, e.g.