Who Is the Editor in Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers?

CHRISTOPH E. SCHWEITZER Who Is the Editor in Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers? Few critics have taken up the question of who the Editor (der Herausgeber ) of Werther's letters and notes might be. That is, no certainty exists as to the identity of the person who not only prepared these materials for publication but also added an important report on the results of his interviews with those closest to Werther during the last days before his suicide. Also, there has been no satisfactory answer to the question of what would have prompted the Editor to publish the material collected and to add the report on the last days of Werther's life. Jürgen Nelles, who devotes a long study to the importance of the Editor in shaping the novel, simply states that there is no possibility of identifying that person and dismisses the suggestion that it might be Wilhelm, Werther's friend and the recipient of the bulk of his letters, by quoting Emil Staiger's verdict that there is no basis in the text for this assumption.11 will try to prove below that Staiger is wrong, that the Editor must indeed be Wilhelm. I will show that such identification solves a number of problems that present themselves when trying to understand the Editor's attitude toward Werther . In addition, equating the Editor with Wilhelm will shed light on important aspects of the preface and will explain the reason behind the publication of the book. Finally, I will suggest a possible solution to the change of point of view at the end of the novel when the Editor reports on Werther's state of mind and thus gives information that he could not possibly have known. As far as I can see, there are already three critics who have equated Wilhelm with the Editor. In 1976 Eric A. Blackall claimed that Goethe intended to represent Wilhelm in the narrator—Blackall's term for the Editor —of the first version, but that the narrator of the second becomes Werther himself.2 Hans Christoph Buch states that "Wilhelm . . . meldet sich nur hin und wieder, als posthumer Herausgeber von Werthers Papieren."3 Waltraud Wiethölter mentions in her commentary on the novel, found in the Deutscher Klassiker Verlag edition of Goethe's works, Werther's last message "an Wilhelm, den Freund [of Werther] und Herausgeber."4 However, none of these critics supports in anyway their equating the Editor with Wilhelm. Erika Nolan concludes her interpretation of Werther by stating that it is up to the reader to find out the motivation that drives the main characGoethe Yearbook XII (2004) 32 Christoph E. Schweitzer ters given that their words and actions could be conscious, semiconscious , or subconscious. For Nolan all three, Werther, Lotte, and Albert , share in the responsibility for the final catastrophe.5 This is certainly a valid observation, except that Nolan omits Wilhelm's role in that catastrophe which is, as I will show below, rather obvious. At the same time, that role buttresses my theory that Wilhelm and the Editor are one and the same. Already in 1775, one year after the novel's appearance, Christian Friedrich von Blanckenburg pointed out Wilhelm's lack of action in connection with Werther's suicide. In a lengthy and in general favorable review of Werther, Blanckenburg admonishes his readers to be sure to comfort a friend who is in the same emotional distress as Werther before his suicide by trying to engage that friend in a variety of activities and by not leaving him alone in a crisis. Blanckenburg then chides Wilhelm for not having rushed to Werther's side before it was too late to save his life. Blanckenburg, as a matter of fact, finds in this lack of action on Wilhelm's part the only improbability of an otherwise perfectly constructed novel.6 Of course, Wilhelm can be excused for not reacting to Werther's calls for help in time. After all, Wilhelm had lived with his friend's ups and downs for a long time, knew that he would constantly change from utter exuberance to deep despair. Also, Wilhelm had tried his best, as Blanckenburg urged...