ABSTRACT
With development comes destruction. This, according to Marshall Berman, is a key message in Goethe’s early nineteenth-century classic Faust, ‘the first, and still the best, tragedy of development’ (Berman, 1982: 40, emphasis in the original). Goethe’s Faust experiences a personal triumph in his role as developer, but his achievement is tempered by his knowledge of what is lost in the process of development, and of the costs to humanity and nature. Berman relates how towards the end of the story Faust had managed to transform the whole region around him with the exception of a small piece of ground in the midst of the new landscape.
