If I wasn't German, I may not have heard of Goethe myself. We certainly didn't study him in any of my classes in high school, and I never attended university.
Knowledge and intelligence are not always mutual. Someone may know lots and lots of stuff, but only really know it through others eyes - parrot-fashion, if you will. Someone else may not have had access to tertiary education and not formally studied anything, but are very intelligent in a myriad of ways. And yet others may be extremely well-versed in, say, astrophysics, but dumber than a bag of hair regarding human psychology. etc.
