Summarized from the Encyclopaedia Britannica article (cited below):

Goethe was born in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1749.  Goethe's father, Johann Caspar, the son and heir of a wealthy innkeeper, devoted his life to seeking the best education for Johann Wolfgang and his younger sister, Cornelia, the only two of Johann Caspar's seven children who would survive early childhood. 

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Before becoming a writer, Goethe studied law in Leipzig; throughout the start of his writing career and verily for the first half of his life Goethe was destined to hold governmental and legal positions in his native Germany.  Five years before Goethe wrote "Prometheus," two nearly fatal attacks of illness brought him to convert from freethinking to evangelical Christianity.  Goethe's Christian phase, however, was short-lived, and by the time he attempted to earn his doctorate in Strasbourg Goethe was turned down for his scandalous dissertation questioning the nature of ancient Jewish religion and the Ten Commandments, leading to his earning a licentiate in law instead.  Because Goethe did not end up with any certifiable academic background in Theology, Philosophy, or Classical Philology, he now stands out from his literary contemporaries as a "practical man" (Encyclopædia Britannica).

While living and studying in Strasbourg, a city known then as the site of turbulent intellectual innovation, Goethe underwent an emotional and intellectual awakening.  In the years preceding the creation of "Prometheus" and the surge of Goethe's  popularity soon thereafter, the young poet and author began to "as the expression of a national culture, part of the historically specific genius of a particular people, concentrated from tim to time in the genius of individuals," which included the likes of Shakespeare and Martin Luther (Encyclopædia Britannica).  Goethe's friendship with Johann Gottfried Herder, a famous literary intellectual, also helped in forging Goethe's artistic style and ideology through their seminal stages.

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Source: "Johann Wolfgang von Goethe". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 11 Mar. 2013

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JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE:  "PROMETHEUS" AND THE EARLY YEARS