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Erdgeist is the spirit of the Earth that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe describes in Faust, Part One. 'Du, Geist der Erde, bist mir näher; schon fühl ich meine Kräfte höher,...' Goethe depicts Erdgeist as a timeless being who endlessly weaves on the loom of time—both in life and in death. In this conception, Erdgeist is the means by which the immaterial manifests itself.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Faust_und_Erdgeist%2C_Illustration_von_Goethe.jpg/220px-Faust_und_Erdgeist%2C_Illustration_von_Goethe.jpg)
In the German language, Erdgeist literally means "earth spirit". In the context of German folklore, Erdgeist specifically refers to a gnome, the earth elemental mentioned by Paracelsus.
Erdgeist is also an 1895 play by Frank Wedekind, which was adapted into a 1923 film directed by Leopold Jessner.