In the mid-1980s, while teaching in Sankt Gallen, Professor Hans Christoph Binswanger – who I am pleased to say is also here today – took a similar line and brought out a book entitled “Money and Magic: a Critique of the Modern Economy in the Light of Goethe’s Faust”.
Binswanger’s thesis is that Goethe was portraying the modern economy with its creation of paper money as a continuation of alchemy by other means. While traditional alchemists attempted to turn lead into gold, in the modern economy, paper was made into money.