Editing The Sorrows of Young Werther (section)

==Cultural impact==
''The Sorrows of Young Werther'' turned Goethe, previously an unknown author, into a literary celebrity almost overnight. [[Napoleon Bonaparte]] considered it one of the great works of European literature, having written a Goethe-inspired soliloquy in his youth and carried ''Werther'' with him on his [[French campaign in Egypt and Syria|campaigning to Egypt]]. It also started the phenomenon known as "Werther Fever," which caused young men throughout Europe to dress in the clothing style described for Werther in the novel.<ref name=NYT>{{cite web |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/18/nyregion/pattern-of-death-copycat-suicides-among-youths.html |date=March 18, 1987 |title=Pattern Of Death: Copycat Suicides Among Youths |author=Goleman, Daniel}}</ref><ref>A. Alvarez, ''The Savage God: A Story of Suicide'' (Norton, 1990), p. 228.</ref> Items of merchandising such as prints, decorated [[Meissen porcelain]] and even a perfume were produced.<ref name="Furedi" /> [[Thomas Carlyle]] coined an epithet, "Wertherism",<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8Nvdx-4-CzoC |title=The Carlyle Encyclopedia |publisher=[[Fairleigh Dickinson University Press]] |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-8386-3792-0 |editor-last=Cumming |editor-first=Mark |location=Madison and Teaneck, NJ |chapter=Wertherism |url-access=limited}}</ref> to describe the self-indulgency of the age that the phenomenon represented.<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Oxford Companion to English Literature |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2009 |editor-last=Birch |editor-first=Dinah |edition=7th |chapter=Wertherism}}</ref> When Goethe completed Werther, he likened his mood to one experienced “after a general confession, joyous and free and entitled to a new life”. For Goethe the Werther effect was a cathartic one, freeing himself from the despair in his life.<ref name=bj/> 

The book reputedly also led to some of the first known examples of [[copycat suicide]], also known as the "Werther effect". The men were often dressed in the same clothing "as Goethe's description of Werther and using similar pistols." Often the book was found at the scene of the suicide.<ref>{{Cite news |url=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/13-reasons-why-and-suicide-contagion1/.|title=13 Reasons Why and Suicide Contagion |last=Devitt |first=Patrick |work=Scientific American |access-date=2017-12-04 |language=en}}</ref> [[Rüdiger Safranski]], a modern biographer of Goethe, dismisses the Werther Effect "as only a persistent rumor."<ref>{{cite journal |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/12/21/super-goethe/ |title=Super Goethe |author=Ferdinand Mount |journal=The New York Review of Books |year=2017 |volume=64 |issue=20}}</ref> Nonetheless, this aspect of "Werther Fever" was watched with concern by the authorities – both the novel and the Werther clothing style were banned in [[Leipzig]] in 1775; the novel was also banned in Denmark and Italy.<ref name="Furedi">{{cite journal |url=https://www.historytoday.com/frank-furedi/media%E2%80%99s-first-moral-panic |title=The Media's First Moral Panic |author=Furedi, Frank |journal=History Today |year=2015 |volume=65 |issue=11}}</ref> It was also watched with fascination by fellow authors. One of these, [[Christoph Friedrich Nicolai|Friedrich Nicolai]], decided to create a satirical piece with a happy ending, entitled ''Die Freuden des jungen Werthers'' ("''The Joys of Young Werther''"), in which Albert, having realized what Werther is up to, loaded chicken's blood into the pistol, thereby foiling Werther's suicide, and happily concedes Charlotte to him. After some initial difficulties, Werther sheds his passionate youthful side and reintegrates himself into society as a respectable citizen.<ref>Friedrich Nicolai: ''Freuden des jungen Werthers. Leiden und Freuden Werthers des Mannes. Voran und zuletzt ein Gespräch''. Klett, Stuttgart 1980, {{ISBN|3-12-353600-9}}</ref>

Goethe, however, was not pleased with the "Freuden" and started a literary war with Nicolai that lasted all his life, writing a poem titled "Nicolai auf Werthers Grabe" ("Nicolai on Werther's grave"), in which Nicolai (here a passing nameless pedestrian) defecates on Werther's grave,<ref>{{citation |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=T-77IXHlsUgC&q=nicolai+at+werther%27s+grave&pg=PA27 |title=Goethe: with plain prose translations of each poem |author=Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, [[David Luke]] |access-date=1 December 2010 |language=de |isbn=978-0140420746 |year=1964|publisher=Penguin }}</ref> so desecrating the memory of a Werther from which Goethe had distanced himself in the meantime, as he had from the ''Sturm und Drang''. This argument was continued in his collection of short and critical poems the ''[[Xenien ]]'' and his play [[Goethe's Faust|''Faust'']].

The [[Hebrew]] translation {{citation |title=יסורי ורתר הצעיר}} was popular among youths in the Zionist communities in [[Mandatory Palestine|British Mandate of Palestine]] in the 1930s and 1940s and was blamed for the suicide of several young men considered to have emulated Werther.{{cn||date=July 2024}}