The American Goethe Society of Washington, D.C., was founded in Baltimore, under the name of Goethe Society of Maryland and the District of Columbia, in 1931. It was then a branch of the Goethe Society of New York, founded in 1927 as the hopefully first American branch of the original Goethe Society of Weimar, Germany. The plan was to have Goethe Societies in many more US cities, but the advent of Hitler's regime and the nazification of Germany's Goethe Society prevented that. In the "troublous times" of 1938, the NY Goethe Society dissolved itself. The Baltimore-Washington offspring continued but cut its ties to Weimar after the outbreak of the war in 1939. Interest in its activities increased after the war so that from the 1950s separate programs were offered in Baltimore and Washington. The Baltimore group ceased its activities in 1992, and since then the Washington branch has been the only surviving American Goethe Society.

Founded by two Johns Hopkins professors and supported primarily by German professors from other area universities, the Society in the past offered a traditional program of monthly lectures during the academic year. The present program aims for more participation by members and guests. The annual schedule includes four lectures on music, history, art and philosophy, monthly reading and discussion of dramas (all in German), monthly Saturday lunches with poetry, and a "Classical Oktoberfest."