In human chemistry, Goethe affinity table is an affinity table, argued to have been constructed by German polymath Johann Goethe in circa 1808, a reconstruction of which is shown adjacent, in which the reactants (top row), on the table, were the characters in the 1809 novella Elective Affinities, and where the new species (new reactants) introduced into the system (estate), chapter by chapter, are those listed below each header reactant (top row), per column, listed via descending affinity force preference (or human free energy measure, in modern terms; see: free energy table), according to the laws of affinity (laws of thermodynamics, in modern terms); those individuals with the weakest elective affinity to the header reactant (top row), listed at the bottom of the table.

Synopsis
The following shows the basic synopsis of what Goethe had in mind when he made his conceptual human affinity table, i.e. he took the basic logic of Geoffroy's affinity table (1718), in the form of Bergman's affinity table (1875), both of which deriving from Newton's last and final "Query 31", all of which Goethe had absorbed as the new system of nature, and used this basis of reaction of forces to make a conceptual affinity table based on his own relationship experiences, which he re-told in the form of a novella with new character names:

Geoffroy to Goethe affinity table (construction)

Geoffroy to Goethe affinity table (construction)

(ass summary)

Overview
Goethe readily admits that his novella was based on the Swedish chemist Torbern Bergman’s 1775 affinity table, and accompanying textbook with its sixty-four affinity reaction diagrams:

“My idea in the new novel The Elective Affinities is to show forth social relationships and the conflicts between them in symbolic concentration” (28 Aug 1808) and “the moral symbols in the natural sciences, that of the elective affinities invented and used by the great Bergman, are more meaningful and permit themselves to be connected better with poetry and society (24 Jul 1809).”

The following both affinity tables, themselves, being expanded versions of French chemist Etienne Geoffrey’s 1718 affinity table; a table which was itself based on verbal descriptions of affinity reactions in Query 31 to the 1718 edition of English physicist Isaac Newton's Opticks.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
Edu	Cha	Ott	Cap	Luc	Mit	Cou	Bar	Nan	Ass	Arc	Oto
Ott	Edu	Edu	Edu		Edu	Bar	Cou	Oto	Ott	Ott	Ott
Cap	Cap	Cha	Cha		Cha	Edu	Edu	Ott
Cha	Ott	Oto			Cap	Cha	Cha
Bar	Oto				Ott
Cou		Ass
Mit		Arc
Oto	Bar	Cap
Luc	Cou	Gar
Eld					Bar
Hom		Luc		Ott	Cou

German science historian Jeremy Adler, who did his 1969 PhD dissertation on the chemists and affinity tables used by Goethe in the construction of his novella, argues that there were close to a dozen more chemists and various affinity tables used by Goethe developing the theoretical construct of his novella. [4]

The fact that Goethe, contrary to his usually practice, "destroyed all of his notes and manuscripts" to this novella, as well as all of his correspondences with Christiane Vulpius (1765-1816), during the tumoltuous war years, circa 1806, however, precludes certain verification of his table, but there is no doubt that he at least made one in his mind, if not surely on paper.

Reconstruction
The adjacent table is an improved reconstructed version of Goethe's original human elective affinity table; as originally found as a 11-column, 11-row human affinity table, constructed by American electrochemical engineer Libb Thims, as found in his 2007 textbook Human Chemistry, based on affinity reaction descriptions in the novella.

The following are the human chemical symbols used: Eduard (Edu), Charlotte (Cha), Ottilie (Ott), the Captain (Cap), in addition to the symbol assignments: Luciane (Luc), Mittler (Mit), the Count (Cou), the Baroness (Bar), Otto (Oto), the Nanni (Nan), the Assistant (Ass), the Architect (Arc), the Elderly clerk (Eld), Homeless people (Hom), the Gardener (Gar), the Lawyer (Law), the Parson (Par), the Surgeon (Sur), the Englishman (Eng), the Traveling companion (Tra), among others.

In the photos to the adjacent table, the photo of Minna Herzlieb will be assumed to be representative of Ottilie, until further determination can be made (as discussed below). More photos will be added when they are found.

The affinity table works, as described affinity table pioneer Etienne Geoffrey, such that at the head of each column is a header species with which all species below can combine or have a rapport with. The latter are so placed such that any higher species replaces all others lower in the column from their compounds with that at the head of the table. In other words, the species at the head of the table can potentially react with any species below it. All the species below the header species are ranked by chemical affinity preferences relative to the top species, with a higher rank corresponding to a higher affinity tendency. The species at the bottom of each column, for instance, have the least amount of affinity for the header species. If the bottom species is in a weakly bonded relationship with the header species, any species above it can potentially displace it from its attached partner. [8]

To go through one example, in the opening of the novella Eduard (Edu) is bonded in comfortable, but tending towards mundane, marriage to Charlotte (Cha), signified by the bonding Edu=Cha. When Eduard's old friend the Captain (Cap) arrives, however, they rekindle their friendship, and thus act to displace Charlotte from her bond with Eduard. This is described as a single elective affinity reaction:

In other words, the Captain has a stronger chemical affinity for Eduard as compared to Charlotte, as represented by her lower position on the affinity table; thus when the Captain is introduced into the mixture (Estate viewed as a closed system, to other reactants) he acts to displace Charlotte from her attachment to Eduard.

Symbols
Goethe assigned the following Bergman-style letter chemical symbols to each character in the novella:

Symbol
Person

Verbal assignment
A
Charlotte
‘Provided it does not seem pedantic,’ the Captain said, ‘I think I can briefly sum up in the language of signs. Imagine an A intimately united with a B, so that no force is able to sunder them; imagine a C likewise related to a D; now bring the two couples into contact: A will throw itself at D, C at B, without our being able to say which first deserted its partner, which first embraced the other’s partner.’

$AB + CD \to AD + CB \,$

‘Now then!’ Eduard interposed: ‘until we see all this with our own eyes, let us look on this formula as a metaphor from which we may extract a lesson we can apply immediately to ourselves. You, Charlotte, represent the A, and I represent your B; for in fact I do depend altogether on you and follow you as A follows B. The C is quite obviously the Captain, who for the moment is to some extent drawing me away from you. Now it is only fair that, if you are not to vanish into the limitless air, you must be provided with a D, and this D is unquestionably the charming little lady Ottilie, whose approaching presence you may no longer resist.’
B
Eduard

C
Captain

D
Ottilie

Goethe, however, if he did at first draw this reaction out prior to writing the above paragraph, would have used Cullen's bonding "brackets" and "darts", in his scheme, as the above horizontal style chemical reaction had not yet evolved to that point. These human chemical symbol assignments would then be A = Charlotte, B = Eduard, C = Captain, and D = Ottilie, as pictured above

Eduard
It seems to be obvious that Eduard was Goethe. As Goethe commented to his associate Johann Eckermann, at the end of his life: “I lived every word of my Elective Affinities.”

Character		Assigned Person		Actual description	Novella description
Eduard (Edu)	=		Johann Goethe (1749-1832)	Comment (circa 1825): “I lived every word of my Elective Affinities.”	Wealthy baron in the best years of his life; he follows his instincts.

Charlotte
Goethe's biographer Herman Grimm, in his 1880 The Life and Times of Goethe, argues that “in Elective Affinities, his put his broken friendship with Frau von Stein was, at last able to receive poetic transformation. [14] The name "Frau von Stein" refers to Charlotte von Stein was rather severe lady who Goethe was married to for ten years around circa 1786, but whom he broke away from and traveled incognito (just as Eduard did in the novella); by the time of the novella, supposedly, Goethe was again on speaking and friendship terms with her.

Character		Assigned Person		Actual description	Novella description
Charlotte (Cha)	=		Charlotte von Stein (1742-1827)	She remained for Goethe an unattainable feminine ideal. [5] Was in a relationship with Goethe, around circa 1786, but from which Goethe was said to have 'broke away from' and traveled incognito.	Eduard breaks away from his marriage to Charlotte, traveling incognito about the world; she is renowned for her aplomb in difficult social situations; she diffuses conflict, smooths over unpleasantness. Previously she tried to fix Ottilie for marriage with Eduard.

David Constantine, English translator of the 1994 Oxford World Classics edition of Elective Affinities, likewise argues that Charlotte was based on Charlotte von Stein.

Ottilie
Constantine argues that Ottilie could have been based on one of three people, firstly Christiane Vulpius, a girl from a local flower shop, who became Goethe’s mistress and whom he lived with for eighteen years. Ottilie could also have been Minna Herzlieb who Goethe began to have feelings for, a year after marrying Christiane. As Contantine comments: [2]

“Goethe wrote a sequence of sonnets for her [Herzlieb]; and it has very often been said that she moved him to write Elective Affinities much as Charlotte Buff had moved him to write Werther, and that she appears in it as Ottilie.”

Constantine, however, also argues that Ottilie could have been Sylvie von Ziegesar whom Goethe was seeing frequently during his usual summer stay in Karlsbad in 1808. It has also been noted that between 1788 and 1816 Goethe was in love, more or less passionately, more or less intimately, half-a-dozen times at least. [2]

Character		Assigned Person		Actual description	Novella description
Ottilie (Ott)	=		Christiane Vulpius (1765-1816)	A girl from a local flower shop, who became Goethe’s mistress (because of her class), whom he lived with for eighteen years; married her in 1806; bore him five children.	Charlotte's adopted niece from her deceased best friend; sent to boarding school so that she and Eduard could be alone and happy.
	=		Minna Herzlieb (1765-1839)	In 1807, she came to Weimar, where she met Goethe, who presented her with some sonnets; it has been argued that she may have been one of the models for Ottilie. [6] [2]
	=		Sylvie von Ziegesar (1785-1858)	Goethe was seeing her frequently during his usual summer stay in Karlsbad in 1808; and it has been said she to was the model for Ottilie. [2] She was the subject of Goethe's poem: "To Sylvie von Ziegesar". [7]

The most-cogent argument for the person behind Ottilie, however, comes from Goethean scholar Hjalmar Boyesen who, in 1879, explained that Ottilie was based on Minna Herzlieb: [12]

“Goethe’s affair with Minna Herzlieb, the adopted daughter of the bookseller Fromman, in Jena, was a kind of poetic devotion, at a time when he was yet bound to another naturally stimulated him to many reflections concerning the nature and validity of marriage, and these reflections, embodied in living characters, furnished the theme of the novel, Elective Affinities.”

In other words, just as Ottilie was the adopted daughter of Charlotte's deceased best friend, so to was Minna the adopted daughter of one of Goethe's friends, the bookseller Fromman, in Jena, with whom Goethe had developed strong amorous feelings towards. To corroborate, as Goethean historian Calvin Thomas explains: [13]

“[Toward the end of 1807] to while away the otherwise lonely and tedious winter evenings he resorted to the homes of congenial friends, among whom was the bookseller Frommann. One of the members of the Frommann household was Wilhelmina Herzlieb, a shy girl of eighteen year whom Goethe had known casually for ten years. He liked her very much—more than was ‘proper’, as he admitted to Zelter some years later—while she seems to have looked up to him with veneration, counting herself blest to be admitted to such choice society.”

Therefore, to conclude, the main source for the Ottilie character seems to have been Minna Herzlieb.

The Captain
The 1916 article “Goethe and the Chemists”, by Roy House, seems to convincingly indicate that German chemist-physician Wilhelm Buchholz, described as a “prosperous and jovial man of the world” and “genuine scientist”, was the Captain based on the fact that Buchholz was lecturing to Goethe in 1798 at the weekly Friday Society meetings on the latest findings in chemistry and that in the novel, the Captain states that he will attempt to explain 'affinity' to Charlotte as he had learned it ten years ago, which coincides with Buchholz last lectures on the latest chemistry to Goethe in 1798 the year of his death.

Character		Assigned Person		Actual description	Novella description
Captain (Cap)	=		Wilhelm Buchholz (1734-1798)	German physician-chemist; part of Goethe’s Friday Society at Weimar, where, from from 1791 to 1798, Buchholz presented the latest chemical findings.The death of Buchholz would corroborate with the "ten years ago" (1808 - 10 = 1798) comment by the Captain in the novella, the year when Goethe began to write Elective Affinities.	In describing affinity to Charlotte, the Captain comments: “as well as I can from what I learned from reading about it some ten years ago. Whether the scientific world still thinks of it in the same way, or whether it agrees with the latest theories, I cannot say.”
	=		Johann Dobereiner (1780-1849)	German chemist; lifelong friend of Goethe's whose weekly lectures he attended. Dobereiner may not have been the Captain, as it seems that Goethe was not acquainted with him until 1810.	A man of knowledge, talents, and ability; presently unemployed, through no fault of his own; becomes a Major after the war; lectures to Eduard and Charlotte on the principles of modern chemistry (chapter four).
	=		Jacob Spielmann (1722-1783)	French chemist; Goethe attended his lectures in 1770-71 at Strasbourg University.

To note, in 2007 Thims argued that the Captain was likely based on a mixture of Goethe’s alter-ego (as some have claimed) and Goethe’s lifelong friend German chemist Johann Dobereiner, whose weekly chemistry lectures Goethe attended, just as the Captain in the novella lectures Eduard and Charlotte on the principles of modern chemistry in chapter four. [3] This, however, seems to have been an incorrect guess, as the Goethe seems not to have become acquainted with Dobereiner until 1810 (the year after his novella was already published). This false supposition, i.e. that Goethe based his human elective affinities theory as he had learned it from Dobereiner's lectures (an incorrect supposition), has been carried forward in print in at least one chemistry textbook. [15]

Count and Baroness
A logical guess as to the people behind the characters of the Count and the Baroness would be Duke Karl August and Duchess Luise Auguste, the latter a princess of the House of Darmstadt. The two were married, by arrangement, in 1775, the year before Karl appointed Goethe to be minister of state at Wiemar, after which the three remained in association for some decades. More investigation needs to be done on this potential assignment.

Character		Assigned Person		Actual description	Novella description
Count (Cou)	=		Karl August (1757-1828)
Baroness (Bar)			Luise Auguste (1757-1830)

The Child
It is argued, cogently, by Goethean scholar John Armstrong that the Child in the novel, and the death of the Child, mirrors the Goethe's relationship to his only surviving child August Goethe, the illegitimate son "love child" of Goethe, aged 19 at the time of writing Elective Affinities, and the horrors at how the child had turned out, Goethe having been an absenteeism father, to a large extent. To quote: [11]

“The death of the infant stands for the relationship between a stable home and the life of a child. The instability of the Goethe household didn’t kill August—but it may well have seemed to his father that he had damaged his son. The extraordinary stability of his own childhood—the deep psychological security Goethe drew from his own parents—was unavailable to his own son.”

Although difficult to summarize, Armstrong seems to argue that Goethe had some intended moral message in the death of the child, that he had learned from his own affairs, in the sense that people often viewed August to be the "the son of not only Goethe but also of 'mademoiselle' Vulpius, the uneducated, unrefined woman; someone who was an embarrassment in polite circles, someone who could not be invited to tea, whom one could not meet socially."

Character		Assigned Person		Actual description	Novella description
Child	=		August von Goethe (1789-1830)	Goethe's only surviving child.	Misfortunate child born out of the mental double adultery.

In other words, it may be that Goethe had intended the death of the child to represent the conflict between pure unadulterated physical lust and the nuances of social acceptances and social binding structures involved in relationships and particularly their affect on the child reared unstably in such circumstances.

To the point, it may have been that the death of Goethe's own four children and the poor resulting nature of his only surviving child bear testament to the real-life repercussions that result when one mates in socially unacceptable ways.

Riemer 75

Assistant
The assistant in the novella was no doubt likely based on Goethe's own personal assistant Friedrich Riemer, to whom Goethe confided in a year prior to the novella's publication that the moral symbols are those employed by Bergman.

Human molecular free energy tables
Interestingly, the above table is a precursor to the logic of human molecular free energy tables, as outlined in by Thims in 2007 as future type of application in algorithms of online dating site matching theory (a billion-dollar per year industry), on the premise that affinity is equal to the negative of the change in the free energy, i.e. A = –ΔG, in the modern chemical thermodynamics sense. [9] This idea, to note, has been passed around to executives at Match.com (who stated that they were not interested at the present time) and is the basis to the possible future site: ReactionMatch.com.

See also
● Goethe’s human chemistry

References
1. (a) Thims, Libb. (2007). Human Chemistry (Volume One). Morrisville, NC: LuLu.
(b) Thims, Libb. (2007). Human Chemistry (Volume Two) (ch. 10: Goethe’s Affinities). Morrisville, NC: LuLu.
2. Constantine, David. (1994). “Introduction” (to English translation of Elective Affinities). Oxford University Press.
3. Thims, ibid. (2007). (Volume One). pg. xv.
4. Adler, Jeremy. (1990). "Goethe's Use of Chemical Theory in his Elective Affinities" (ch. 18, pgs. 263-79) in Romanticism and the Sciences - edited by Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine, New York: Cambridge University Press.
5. Charlotte von Stein – Britannica.
6. Minna Herzlieb – Wikipedia.
7. (a) Sylvie von Ziegesar – Wikipedia.
(b) Sylvie von Ziegesar (German → English) – Wikipedia.
8. ibid. Thims (2007), pg. 382: description of Geoffroy's 1718 affinity table.
9. ibid. Thims. (2007), section: Human affinity (Gibbs free energy) tables, pgs. 464-68.
10. House, Roy T. (1916). “Goethe and the Chemists”, Popular Science, pgs. 332-37. Apr.
11. Armstrong, John. (2006). Love, Life, Goethe: How to Be Happy in an Imperfect World (pgs. 362-65). Allen Lane.
12. Boyesen, Hjalmar H. (1879). Goethe and Schiller: Their Lives and Collected Works (pgs. 120-24). C. Scribner’s Sons.
13. Thomas, Calvin. (1917). Goethe (pg. 132). H. Holt and Co.
14. Grimm, Herman F. (1880). The Life and Times of Goethe (§23: Study of Natural Science: “The Natural Daughter” and “Elective Affinities”, pgs. 442-74; quote, pg. 463). Little, Brown, and Company.
15. Syamal, Arun. (2008). Living Science Chemistry 10 (pg. 136). Ratna Sagar.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
Edu	Cha	Ott	Cap	Luc	Mit	Cou	Bar	Nan	Ass	Arc	Oto
Ott	Edu	Edu	Edu		Edu	Bar	Cou	Oto	Ott	Ott	Ott
Cap	Cap	Cha	Cha		Cha	Edu	Edu	Ott
Cha	Ott	Oto			Cap	Cha	Cha
Bar	Oto				Ott
Cou		Ass
Mit		Arc
Oto	Bar	Cap
Luc	Cou	Gar
Eld					Bar
Hom		Luc		Ott	Cou

Symbol	Person		Verbal assignment
A		Charlotte	‘Provided it does not seem pedantic,’ the Captain said, ‘I think I can briefly sum up in the language of signs. Imagine an A intimately united with a B, so that no force is able to sunder them; imagine a C likewise related to a D; now bring the two couples into contact: A will throw itself at D, C at B, without our being able to say which first deserted its partner, which first embraced the other’s partner.’ $AB + CD \to AD + CB \,$ ‘Now then!’ Eduard interposed: ‘until we see all this with our own eyes, let us look on this formula as a metaphor from which we may extract a lesson we can apply immediately to ourselves. You, Charlotte, represent the A, and I represent your B; for in fact I do depend altogether on you and follow you as A follows B. The C is quite obviously the Captain, who for the moment is to some extent drawing me away from you. Now it is only fair that, if you are not to vanish into the limitless air, you must be provided with a D, and this D is unquestionably the charming little lady Ottilie, whose approaching presence you may no longer resist.’
B		Eduard
C		Captain
D		Ottilie

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
Edu	Cha	Ott	Cap	Luc	Mit	Cou	Bar	Nan	Ass	Arc	Oto
Ott	Edu	Edu	Edu		Edu	Bar	Cou	Oto	Ott	Ott	Ott
Cap	Cap	Cha	Cha		Cha	Edu	Edu	Ott
Cha	Ott	Oto			Cap	Cha	Cha
Bar	Oto				Ott
Cou		Ass
Mit		Arc
Oto	Bar	Cap
Luc	Cou	Gar
Eld					Bar
Hom		Luc		Ott	Cou

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
Edu	Cha	Ott	Cap	Luc	Mit	Cou	Bar	Nan	Ass	Arc	Oto
Ott	Edu	Edu	Edu		Edu	Bar	Cou	Oto	Ott	Ott	Ott
Cap	Cap	Cha	Cha		Cha	Edu	Edu	Ott
Cha	Ott	Oto			Cap	Cha	Cha
Bar	Oto				Ott
Cou		Ass
Mit		Arc
Oto	Bar	Cap
Luc	Cou	Gar
Eld					Bar
Hom		Luc		Ott	Cou