February 29, 2008

My Meeting With Mephistopheles

By HEIDI STORL

In my formative years, I spent many hours at Auerbach's Keller, a tavern in Leipzig, then part of East Germany. I sat in the room were Goethe had sat. I ate the same food that Goethe had eaten — Allerlei, a dish made of peas, carrots, asparagus, and mushrooms; Königsberger Klops, a type of meatballs; and Schlachtsplatte, a platter containing various cuts of pork and pork sausages. I breathed the same cool, wet air that Goethe had breathed. Of course, at that age, I didn't know