Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns

By Thomas Mann

Language: English

Publisher: University of California Press

Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.3 x 8.25 inches

ISBN-10: 520070070

ISBN-13: 978-0520070073

Publication Date: November 12, 1990

Print Length: 475 pages

Description:

Fascinated with the concept of genius and the richness of German culture, Thomas Mann found in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe the embodiment of the German culture hero. His novelistic biography of Goethe, first published in English in 1940, offers a vivid dual portrait—a complex study of Goethe and Lotte, the still-vivacious woman who was the model for Charlotte in Goethe’s widely-read The Sorrows of Young Werther. As Lotte anticipates meeting Goethe again after forty years, her thoughts and conversations with those in Weimar who knew the great man allow Mann to assess Goethe’s genius from multiple perspectives. Hayden White’s fresh appraisal of the novel reveals its resonances with contemporary concerns.