Goethe - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
   born 1749, in Frankfurt am Main
   died 1832, in Weimar, aged 82
Famous writer and artist. He was okay, but his family name (and its subsequent form) shall forever be clouded by the evil deeds of his cousin Johann Wolfgang VAN Goethe, a scoundrel and cad of the first order. 

North Americans might pronounce this surname by aping the queen's engrish drawl of a limey toff: "Gerta"; 
get the pronunciation right and you might get lucky with that cute teaching assistant. 

"Faust" books I & II would be the smarter Goethe's most complex and profound work; written over some 60 years. This would lend some credence to theories of neither Joe's ever having finished anything in his life, except early with their women. 

Forget the smarter one. 

It is the evil one we must fear, for his spoor tracks to the present, and his evil is among us right now. Aliases, AKA: Joe, Joey, Jo-Jo, Joey Wolf, Old Nick and later in life, simply "Ya Old Shitstain" rumoured to be involved with a mafia type organization that sounds like Bavarian Aluminum .. or something like that.

Evil Joe's descendants were forced to emigrate to America under threat of death, due to strong genetic predispositions to criminality, insanity, and delusions of grandeur. Mid-Atlantic, they changed the surname to GATES. The worst instance of the gene is evidenced at (some say "by") birth, in the accursed child's peals of heinous cackling, rather than the usual helpless wailings. Those offal most horridly afflicted are branded William, a Family Secret Code to warn relatives of those bearing the worst of the Family Curse at reunions, etc. 
 
Many academics agree that, although he never really finished it, even the good Joe's big hit Faust was a blatant plagiarism of "The Tragicall History of D. Faustus" (1604) by Chrisopher Pimpernel Slash Marlowe (1564-1593) [q.v.].

As for the evil Joe, he was universally recognized, finally, as a catatonic, degenerate autist, with absolutely no sense of guilt, not to mention propriety. Joe thrived throughout his pithy life; at first flaunting justice by levering his parents' considerable wealth, then, later, garishly throwing down pittances  from his disgusting intellectual plunder of C.P.M. under the false flag of Charity, to satisfy only sheer whims and the 1700s version of the IRS. 

He was repeatedly called onto the carpet before his nation judicial system, but callously bought his way out of every fold, claiming to the end that he invented everything, and that when he died, so would all of us, because we were just "fig newtons of his imagiminashin".

A cad, a bully and consumate wanker. Jail was too good, anyway. Let's hope he went to heaven. Cause Hell was also too good for him.

Some quotes from the smarter Jo-Wolfie; whither/whether who he stole these, we may never know: 

"We cannot possess what we do not understand." 
 ... (So clone it, embrace it and extend it, and call it innovation)

"Since I have heard often enough that everyone in the end has his own religion, nothing seemed more natural to me than to fashion my own."
 ... (de facto belief systems .. de facto operating systems)

"Truth is a torch but a tremendous one. That is why we hurry past it, shielding our eyes, indeed, in fear of getting burned."
... (Indeed ..... but if someone wants to buy any of it, send the sales guys out immediately and close the punters. We'll deal with the lawyers later.)

Further reading on Marlowe:
   http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=1999.03.0010