High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust is a tragic play in two parts: Faust. Der Tragdie erster Teil (translated as: Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy) and Faust. Der Tragdie zweiter Teil (Faust: The Second Part of the Tragedy). Although written as a closet drama, it is the play with the largest audience numbers on German-language stages. Faust is Goethe's most famous work and considered by many to be one of the greatest works of German literature. Goethe completed a preliminary version of Part One in 1806. The 1808 publication was followed by the revised 1828-1829 edition, which was the last to be edited by Goethe himself. Prior to these appeared a partial printing in 1790 of Faust, a Fragment. The earliest forms of the work, known as the Urfaust, were developed between 1772 and 1775; however, the details of that development are no longer entirely clear.