I first read this story long time ago in Stefan Zweig's "Marie Antoinette - The Portrait of an Average Woman". As the story goes in the book, some young German students visited the site and one of them was furious when he noticed that the tapestry represented a myth/tale of Jason, Medea and Creusa, which is a prime example of unhappy marriage. Later on it is revealed that the student is Goethe. So my question is whether it is possible that this actually happened? Are there any other stories (memoirs of Goethe himself maybe) that would back it up? Even if the part with Goethe is not true, was there actually such tapestry in the wedding venue?
Well, not quite. First, Goethe wasn't that young a student; he was 20 when she was married. At the time he was studying in Strasbourg on the French side of the Rhine border but never really toured France proper or Paris, much less the Royal Chapel at Versailles where Marie Antoinette was married.
Now, the popularity of Ancient Greece was still alive in that era, and Goethe's own works and reworkings of Greek drama are as good evidence of that as anything. Such a motif would not be out of place on a tapestry in France in that era. But such a tapestry would be out of place in a church, where biblical themes would be preferred. Pre-revolution you wouldn't have such a tapestry in a church while post-revolution, art and inventories of the palace (and its chapels) were either moved or sold.
That's a bit of a moot point though. The story this refers to is from Goethe's autobiography, here's the relevant part in English translation. When he was in Strasbourg, Marie Antoinette passed through on her way from her native Austria to Paris to get married. So they prepared a temporary wood building on an island in the Rhine and adorned it with tapestries, to have a reception welcoming her into her new country. By his account, Goethe bribed his way in to look around and did get upset at the motif of one of the tapestries. It was not, however, the site of the marriage ceremony.