num_pages: 475
description: Thomas Mann, fascinated with the concept of genius and with the richness of German culture, found in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe the embodiment of the German culture hero. Mann's novelistic biography of Goethe was first published in English in 1940. Lotte in Weimar is a vivid dual portrait—a complex study of Goethe and of Lotte, the still-vivacious woman who in her youth was the model for Charlotte in Goethe's widely-read The Sorrows of Young Werther . Lotte's thoughts, as she anticipates meeting Goethe again after forty years, and her conversations with those in Weimar who knew the great man, allow Mann to assess Goethe's genius from many points of view. Hayden White's fresh appraisal of the novel reveals its consonances with our own concerns.
language: English
title: Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns
titlecomplete: Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns
characters: Adele Schopenhauer, Charlotte (The Sorrows of Young Werther), August von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
genres: 20th Century, Literature, German Literature, Classics, Literary Fiction, Novels, Germany, Roman, Historical Fiction, Fiction
ratings_count: 1227
places: Weimar, Germany
publisher: University of California Press