Faust – an 'Optimistic' Tragedy

Hardly has any other piece of classic literature kept scholars and students, stage managers and writers as busy as Johann Wolfgang Goethe's 'Faust' drama: Thomas Mann and Christopher Marlowe used it as a template for 'Dr. Faustus', Gotthold Ephraim Lessing left a fragment of the Faust topic. Franz Liszt  composed his 'Faust-Symphony'and Charles Gounod the 'Faust Opera'. Mikhail Bulgakov's classic Soviet novel 'The Master and Margarita' experienced a remarkable revival in today's Russia. Even priests, like Gounod's French compatriot André Dabezies, were motivated to embark on 'Faust': Dabezies dedicated his belated dissertation to the theme "Visages de Faust au XXe siècle" (The Faces of Faust in the 20th Century).

Intellectuals from China found – and still find – Faust highly congenial to the Chinese enlightenment discourse and its turning points in the 20th and early 21th centuries. Wang Guowei (1877-1927), historian and poet, called Goethe's Faust "the best literary work of   European modern age". For scholars of the People's Republic, Faust is an "optimistic tragedy", hailing the hero's "indefatigable search of truth" and his will to succeed as a 'Global Player' (Academia Updates, Aug. 13, 2025). Ever since published, controversies about ‘Faust’, his character and social impact have not ceased to cause quite a stir.

Certainly, Faust is ambivalent. Modern research describes his character neither idealistic nor worth condemning, nor incorrigible. He is no super-man, but certainly not average. Faust is an ‘arch-type’, in a sense that he integrates within himself all the positive and negative characteristics of a human being. Exceptional in his ambitions to go as far as to understand the totality of knowledge and existence (“that I may understand whatever binds the world’s innermost core together”), Faust insatiably desires to expand, like a ‘wanderer’ who unfortunately cannot but fall back to the cramped spaces of his origins. In Goethe's  drama we can see an allegory of our modern society – and of Travel & Tourism.

"Two Souls, alas, are Dwelling in my Breast ..."

Stakeholders of paid hospitality, eager to sublimate Travel & Tourism with adjectives like sustainable, responsible and ecological – most recently 'meaningful' –, have made great efforts to channel business astuteness and ethic principles, returns of investment and socio-ecological requirements, accordingly. But negative headlines about anti-mass-Tourism riots, staged by locals at different Tourism hot spots, tarnished the waistcoat of the world's tourism and hospitality sector. Worse still, deeply affected by effects of climate-change and strongly intertwined with society and macroeconomics, the industry has been regarded as non-relevant during Covid-19, and remained largely locked-down.

For many of us a tragedy, Covid-19 served as a wake-up call, to our society in general, and to Tourism in particular: The pandemic relentlessly revealed perceived insufficiencies of a lifestyle-tailored 'comfort-zone' our society has ensconced itself over the years, including Travel & Tourism as a paramount element of both our way of life and economy, yet also undeniable weaknesses of Tourism's pretensions as the world's major employer, proven fun-provider and arguably foremost peace-promoting industry.

Major crises have always been threats to people’s lives, often interacting with man’s inclination to arrogance, ignorance, violence, megalomania and hedonism. These properties, obnoxious yet familiar, provide the background of the human drama.

With his ‘Faust’ drama, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe undoubtedly delivers an arch-type for such a scenario: Independent from time and place, the drama describes important structures of individual and collective action within society, and explains the consequences. Goethe underpins the pedagogic value of trial and error. “The voyage across the world is a seminar in terms of human nature, even if the tour-guide through the worldly is called Mephisto”, adds Peter Coulmas (Weltbürger/ World Citizen).

The dramatic play shows us who we are and what we do. Its clearness and vividness may turn our attention to our own lives, teaching us to stay alert: We must not take wealth and health for granted, not democracy and not freedom, nor try to do everything that is doable. We must decide. If so, twilight zones give us time to assess our preferences: 'as well as ...'  or 'either ... or' –  will and act, ambition and conscience, propensity and reason, nomadism (Tourism!) and sedentariness. The option of will and act is rooted in the fundamental dualism of mind and heart. Faust is fully aware of it: “Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast, And one is striving to forsake its brother.”

There are unmistakable signs today that the 'Faustian World' has undergone its remake – with a power shift from democracies to autocracies, from governments to multinationals, from the West to East Asia, from lliances in turmoil to the harsh winds from the Russian steppe across a World-War-I-like Ukrainian war front -- and further on to a seemingly unstoppable 'Forever War' (Dexter Filkins, 2009) in the Middle East.

Meanwhile we are facing a tariff-plagued world trade, decaying civil infrastructures and a florishing industral-military complex: More trial, more error, more furor, evoking nuclear nightmares. Returning demons are in the air: Killing, kidnapping and torturing, ruin fields and desperation in Gaza, like drawn from a World-War II inferno template, pictures of Palestinians dying from hunger and Jewish skeleton-like hostages digging their own graves, eighty years after the Holocaust. Visionary thoughts are anything but bereft of sarcasm, when Greenland is abused as an object of a super-power's willy-nilly security doctrine and  the idea of a 'Riviera' fuels bizarre intentions on how to shape the future 'Gaza Strip'.

The trickling down brought news withheld to daylingt at last -- to most of us with little surprise: The origins of the capricious pandemic  was not natural, but human-made. Assertions about allegedly infected bats on a Chinese seafood market remained enigmatic from the very beginning, hardly prone to conceal human failure on experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The awkwardness of governmental and institutional action was telling: Instead of attacking the matter immediately and openly, priorities lay elsewhere: on outsourcing responsibilities, downplaying impacts, accusing and recriminating. Blocking up and locking down determined the amplitude of the pendulum, locally and globally, while well and less-known virologists sprang up like mushrooms, commended vaccination, face masks and distancing. Doomsday scenarios shocked the world, and governments, social institutions and churches, the Travel & Tourism sector included, almost unanimously adhered to the restrictions imposed.  

In 2020/2021 we found ourselves in the midst of the ups and downs of the pandemic and its mutations. Covid-19 compelled us to hide our smiles under a strange mask, and distancing replaced warm embraces. We were lingering in a depressive state. Tour-operators and hotels were groaning with thousands of booking cancelations, evoking a foot-note over another meaning of the dubious 'cancel culture'. For Bruce Poon Tip, founder of G Adventures, Covid-19 included chances: "I think Covid-19 was a good thing for Tourism: The pandemic sharpened the view to the essential – the destination" (Reise vor 9, Oct. 10, 2025) Living in Tourism destinations, yet maybe not from Tourism itself, some people were well aware of the positive sides to Covid-19: "It is so quiet now, lakes have become clean, there is no littering along trails, nature recovers ..."

Hungry and thirsty for post-pandemic life, we were looking forward to enjoy bright days and sunny holidays again. By and by, life was coming back, as habits dictated during Covid-19  were discarded. Relaxations from lockdown invited happy moments to come back and “stay a while …”  At the beginning it was like short-lived beams of sun light piercing the fickle ‘Mists of Avalon’. They could hardly divert from a thoroughly felt individual drama, accompanied by the Rolling Stones' haunting evocation that we were “Living in a Ghost Town”.

It was remarkable that, despite huge efforts to meet health regulations, Travel & Tourism and the entire hospitality sector, as well as all institutions of arts and culture, sports and leisure, were considered as ‘systemically non-relevant’, and forced to shut down more arbitrarily than others. Usually, when restrictions, limitations, or any kind of governmental disturbances affecting daily life are in the air, storms of popular outrage would determine the picture. And indeed, there was much controversy in politicians' desperate attempts to make ends meet, as, in the wake of eerie news, worried citizens bought masks, and waves of protests flooded the streets.

One question, however, has never been fully answered: Why did 'the top brass' of Travel & Tourism not stand up adequately, demonstrating the sector's statistically uncontested social, enviromental and economic relevance? -- Maybe since long ago already, Travel & Tourism has been “weighed, but found too light”. Despite alarming symptoms, we need not interpret this Bible message as fatal as the inauspicious ‘writing on the wall’, addressed to the hedonistic Babylonian King Belsazar. Yet what it insinuates is threatening enough: that Tourism is simply not taken seriously! The perceived happy-go-lucky business has an image problem. The world has become shakier, and everybody feels it.

Tourism could have made a difference, shown more fervour in terms of commitment and creative intervention. Are ‘fragmentation’ and SME (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) structures just a welcome excuse for Tourism’s markedly low profile when in times of an extreme crisis the bell tolls? Can Tourism still create an effect, or is it only deeply affected? Covid-19 was the litmus test for too many who hit a slump, Travel & Tourism included. Tackling the pandemic revealed big gaps to fill and left questions unanswered. Meanwhile, not only long-Covid patients have been asking: Were there any visible measures taken, responsibilities determined, and lessons learnt?

It does not seam so. Forgotten are most of those evocative pretensions and shiny resolutions to re-vamp, re-structure, re-form, re-do Travel & Tourism from scratch! Running out of both skilled staff and time to come to terms with the past, we are facing new, old human-made 'pandemics' ravaging the world: wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, Sudan, Myanmar and unsolved bloody conflicts elsewhere; the imponderabilities of erratic and authoritarian governments, wiping out the once clear 'fault lines' of democratic and authoritarian states; the challenging effects of climate change, increasing economic crises and social turmoil; tightened challenges of social media, the speed of using robotics and Artificial Intelligence; dwindling demographics, rising migration streams, crime and terrorism.

The global situation seems desperate, yet desperation is no way out. "But where there is danger, there also grows the saving grace." Hölderlin's encouragement deserves being heard – and adheared to. True leaders of the sun-and-fun sector that enigmatically has been called 'white industry'(!), should always rise their voice, calling to act – as done with the SCREAM.travel campaign triggered by the World Tourism Network (WTN) after the Russian attack on Ukraine – a strong accent against the emergence of a purely 'Faustian World'.

Part II puts Faust's hubris, illusions and restlessness in the context of our time. The more we discover the more doubts emerge, and we are never satisfied. Violent attempts to create paradise on Earth mostly end up in calamities and destruction.Tourism tries with marketing and promotion – the risk to end up in overtourism and disillusion is real. However, there are natural patterns to follow.-- Stay tuned.