Sorrows of Werther
Lecture by Prof. em. Dr. Rüdiger Görner
Johann Wolfgang Goethe's epistolary novel "The Sorrows of Young Werther" (1774) initiated a literary phenomenon in the 19th century Europe that popularised motifs of the stylisation of intensified sensuality and their aesthetic function. Werther's unrequited love for Lotte, which ends tragically with his suicide, remains a widely discussed tale of woe throughout our time.
Perhaps less known is the fact that Werther's Lotte also embodies Goethe's unrequited love, Charlotte Sophie Henriette Buff, from his own life. She is also the 'Lotte' who marries the lawyer and court counsellor Johann Christian Kestner. Goethe's Lotte is thus the mother of the name patron of the Kestner Gesellschaft - Hanover's most famous lawyer, diplomat and art collector - August Kestner. Goethe's novel thus builds a bridge which connects poetry, suffering, love, reality and art.
Goethe's influence is evident in Ugo Foscolo's epistolary novel "Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis" (1802), Stendhal, Kierkegaard's "Die Krankheit zum Tode" (1849), Jacobsen's "Niels Lyhne" (1880) and Jules Massenet's oper "Werther" (1892). In his lecture, Görner would like to bring up for discussion the handling of this literary elementary event, in befitting of our historically significant house.
Rüdiger Görner is a German literary scholar, writer, translator and critic who has lived in London since 1981. In 2004 he founded the Centre for British-German Cultural Relations at the University of London, where he teaches modern German literature. His fields of research include science and music in German-language literature, poetry theory at the turn of the century and "pluralectics" in German Romanticism. As a Guest Professor at the Leibniz University of Hanover, he lectured on literary-critical perspectives of the Age of Enlightenment. Görner's work and research have been honoured numerous times - in 2012 he received the German Language Prize, which was followed up two years later with the Reimar Lüst Prize for international academic and cultural mediation. He is the author of many books, amongst them, “Romantik, Ein europäsiches Ereignis” (2021), “Georg Trakl, Dichter im Jahrzehnt der Extreme” (2014) or “Nietzsches Kunst, Annäherung an einen Denkartisten“ (2000).
In cooperation with the Goethe-Gesellschaft Hannover.
Information on the Goethe-Gesellschaft Hannover and its 2024 program can be found in this flyer (German only).