The ‘Werther Effect’ of Goethe’s Werther: Anecdotal Evidence in Historical News Reports

ABSTRACT

Anecdotal evidence suggests a spike in suicides occurred after the publication of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774. Imitation suicides elicited by media portrayals of suicide have since been termed the “Werther effect.” However, evidence for a suicide “epidemic” after the publication of Goethe’s Werther is limited to unsystematically documented cases. This study provides an overview of all previously noted copycat suicides, as well as a systematic search for anecdotal evidence of suicides imitating Goethe’s Werther in the press. Newspaper databases of the DACH countries were searched for reports of suicides that the press had connected to Goethe’s Werther since 1774. In addition to confirming most suicides that have previously been reported in the literature, eight additional suicides attributed to Goethe’s Werther not yet addressed in previous literature were identified in the newspapers. Goethe’s Werther was presumably connected to several copycat suicides. However, newspapers reported on the Werther-epidemic itself and the moral implications of glamorizing suicide much more than on specific imitative suicides. Whether the reports identified by this study substantiate a “Werther epidemic” remains up to interpretation. The lack of research on possible further Werther effects elicited by fiction books is discussed.

The novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther), written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, is a harrowing love story based on true events (Jack, 2014). It tells the tale of a man named Werther who falls in love with a young woman named Lotte. Before her mother’s death, Lotte promises to marry a man named Albert. Werther, knowing that his love for Lotte can therefore not be consummated, dies a tragic death by suicide. The novel was first published in 1774 in Germany and became a bestselling literary sensation. The book was translated into multiple languages, grew popular all across Europe and the US (Bell, 2011), and inspired countless other works of literature, plays, and operas (Appell, 1855).

Many readers were swept up by the story, identified with the protagonist, and imitated Werther by wearing the same outfit as Werther, called Werthertracht (Werther attire), which consisted of a blue tailcoat, a yellow waistcoat, and tall brown boots. This popularity culminated in the frenzy of so-called Wertherfieber (Werther mania) or Werther-Krankheit (Werther disease) (Hillebrand, 1914). Allegedly, identification with the tragic hero went so far that readers even imitated his death by suicide. In response, the book was banned in some European cities in order to stop the spread of the “Werther epidemic” (Appell, 1855). In 1814, Goethe acknowledged the effect his novel had on avid readers and wrote, “my friends mistakenly thought that they must transform poetry into reality… and, if necessary, shoot themselves; what occurred among a few at first, later took place among the general public” (von Goethe, 1814, p. 345f).

An entire line of research (Werther effect research) was named after the novel: The rise of suicides in the aftermath of a suicide news story has come to be known as the “Werther effect” (Phillips, 1974). And yet, there is a lack of evidence for a substantial Werther effect elicited by The Sorrows of Young Werther itself. Attempts have been made to provide evidence for a Werther-induced suicide epidemic (e.g., Thorson & Öberg, 2003), yet there is no systematic overview of all previously identified copycat suicides in the (mostly German) literature. The present project thus addresses the question: (RQ) To what extent did Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther elicit a Werther effect in German speaking countries? The research question is addressed in two steps: After elaborating on the current state of Werther effect research in fiction, the present study aims to provide an overview of suicides that have been attributed to Goethe’s Werther in the literature this far in a first step. Second, a systematic search of historical news reports was conducted to look for further presumed imitations of Goethe’s Werther as reflected by the press.

Evidence for imitation suicides in fiction

To examine possible effects of Goethe’s Werther, we must first acknowledge the state-of-the-art of Werther effect research in fiction books. The idea that media depictions of suicidality may affect suicidal behavior in vulnerable individuals was established about 50 years prior to Goethe’s Werther. In 1723, so-called Kabuki plays, which displayed disheartening love stories resulting in double suicide on stage, were banned in Japan (Krysinska & Lester, 2009). This was decided following reports of couples imitating these fictitious suicides in real life. This is to say that Goethe’s Werther was neither the first, nor the only work of fiction that (allegedly) elicited copycat effects, though, undoubtedly the most well-known.

While the so -called Werther effect hypothesis is well established when it comes to (nonfiction) news reports (Niederkrotenthaler et al., 2020; Pirkis & Blood, 2001a), investigations into the association between suicide content in fiction and imitation suicides have produced inconclusive results (Pirkis & Blood, 2001b). In a meta-analysis, Stack (2009) found no overall increase in suicides after exposure to fictional content, however, the data did indicate a tendency for the imitation of the suicide method depicted. A recent study by Chen et al. (2020) investigated the macro-level associations between books and suicide rates and found that nonfiction books about suicides were able to predict annual suicide rates whereas fiction books about suicides did not influence suicides in the general population.

Interestingly, there have not been any assessments of possible Werther effects from fiction books on a more individual level. This is surprising, considering that suicide novels often target the vulnerable demographic of adolescents and that suicides are often portrayed in fiction in general (Pridmore & Walter, 2013; Stack & Bowman, 2011). In fact, some of the most famous novels in history deal with suicide, such as Madame Bovary by Flaubert (1857), Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky (1866), and Anna Karenina by Tolstoy (1878), as well as more recent novels like 13 Reasons Why by Asher (2007). The sheer volume of suicide in fiction thus warrants further investigation into possible Werther effects.

Anecdotal evidence for imitation of Goethe’s Werther

In the seminal study that coined the term “Werther effect,” Phillips wrote, “Widespread imitation of Werther’s suicide was never conclusively demonstrated” (Phillips, 1974, p. 340). Werther effect research has necessarily relied on anecdotal evidence for the “Werther epidemic.” The most well-documented suicide surrounding the publication of Werther is the one of a young woman named Christel (Christine) von Laßberg (also Lasberg or Lassberg) who died by drowning herself in the Ilm River in 1788 in Weimar, where Goethe was residing at the time (Brosius & Ziegler, 2001). We know of this suicide because of Goethe’s diaries (von Goethe, 1778). It is said that this tragic event, and other imitation suicides, are the reason Goethe adapted The Sorrows of Young Werther in a second edition of the book that provided less identification-evoking elements (Wilkes, 1998). Several (mostly German) publications have reported further anecdotal evidence, most of which was discovered in various historical letter collections. Table 1 provides a list of all previously known suicides that were attributed to Goethe’s Werther.

Table 1. List of suicides attributed to Goethe’s Werther in previous literature.

Year	Person	Method	Connection to Goethe’s Werther	Source
1755	“a hysterical person”	poisoning	noted that Werther made her end her life	Bachleitner (2017)
1775	Mr. von Lütichow	gunshot	unknown	Steinberg (1999)
1777	Student from Kiel named Karstens	gunshot	Goethe’s Werther on table	Bachleitner (2017)
1777	“a young Swede”	gunshot	Goethe’s Werther found next to him	Bell (2011)
1778	Christel von Laßberg	drowning	Goethe’s Werther found in pocket	Wilkes (1998)
1778	“another Scandinavian”	drowning	Goethe’s Werther found in pocket	Bell (2011)
1781	Capitan von Arenswald	gunshot	diary similar to Werther’s	Andree (2006)
1784	Miss Glover	poisoning	Goethe’s Werther under pillow	Steinberg (1999)
1785	“Mr. L.”	gunshot	Goethe’s Werther on table	Bachleitner (2017)
1785	“a young person”	unknown	Goethe’s Werther on table	Andree (2006)
1785	“a gentlemen-soldier”	gunshot	suicide note similar to Werther’s	Bell (2011)
1785	Mrs. Franziska von Ickstadt	jumping	presumed imitation has since been debunked	Bachleitner (2017)
1788	Mr. von Saplonzay	gunshot	Goethe’s Werther found next to him	Bachleitner (2017)
1789	Monsieur Mattheij from Utrecht	gunshot	suicide note warns others of imitation	Andree (2006)
1790	“a shoemaker apprentice from Halle”	jumping	Goethe’s Werther found in pocket	Appell (1855)
1807	Bertell, a German migrant in New Jersey	gunshot	Goethe’s Werther found next to him	Bell (2011)
1830	Mr. Auguste Sautelet	gunshot	mentioned Werther in his suicide note	Andree (2006)
1833	Mr. Carl von Hohenhausen	gunshot	mother attributes son’s death to Goethe’s Werther	Appell (1855)
1927	Mr. Paul Vidal	gunshot	died amidst the stage setting of the Werther opera’s death scene	Mestas and Arendt (2021)

Some suicides listed here are mentioned in multiple publications. This list provides the source that provides the most detailed account. Note that most of these sources use various private letters or diaries as references.

Interestingly, both Bell (2011) and Steinberg (1999) wonder whether this evidence is merely circumstantial and whether it is possible that the “Werther-epidemic” was simply exaggerated by journalists who bestowed their moral judgments upon their readership. Bell (2011) argues that Goethe’s critics, who readily brought forth evidence of copycat suicides, were trying to “undermine the genre’s soaring popularity and to vent their frustrations and anxieties about secular reading, the proper role of literature in adolescent education, and the plasticity of individual morality” (Bell, 2011, p. 94).

In 1783, just nine years after The Sorrows of Young Werther was first published, Heidecke wrote, “A few years ago, when Werther’s Sorrows were published, nothing was more certain, than the fact that a great amount of young people will shoot themselves in every city every year. … one’s expectations have been fooled, as to this hour, not one has shot himself for his Lotte since Werther” (Heidecke, 1902, p. 75).

The present study

In addition to the comprehensive collection of anecdotal evidence that has been listed in (mostly German) literature thus far (see Table 1 above), this study aims to find additional evidence. Due to the lack of reliable suicide numbers for the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it is impossible to investigate whether there was a rise in suicides in the general public after Goethe’s Werther was published. However, I conducted a systematic search for news reports of suicides that the press attributed to Goethe’s Werther, thereby enriching our collection of anecdotal evidence of imitative suicides. Newspapers can be considered a valuable source for two reasons: (1) The press report on suicides and therefore potentially act as a proxy for (mediated) reality. (2) Newspaper reports help us understand social norms around suicide at the time.

Materials and methods

Three newspaper digitalization projects in the DACH countries were utilized: The German Digital Library’s Deutsches Zeitungsportal, the Austrian National Library’s AustriaN Newspaper Online (ANNO), and the Swiss National Library’s E-Newspaper Archives, all of which allow for keyword searches in historical newspapers.

Sample

Queries in all three databases included all available newspapers since 1774 (first publication of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther). Multiple keywords were used to discover articles that establish a connection between a suicide and Goethe’s Werther (see Supplemental Online Material (SOM) Tables S1 and S2). A total of N = 7,473 news articles made up the sample of search results. All search results were then carefully sifted to restrict the material to articles describing specific suicide cases imitating Goethe’s Werther. This led to a drastic reduction in truly relevant news articles. All remaining news articles (n = 12) are presented below.

Ethics statement

This project was approved by the IRB of the Department of Communication, University of Vienna, Austria.

Results

A total of N = 7,473 search results were assessed. Some news reports produced by the queries included a reference to Werther, or referred to the deceased as “Werther,” because the deceased had also suffered from lovesickness (e.g., Reichspostreuter, 1778), even when an actual connection with the novel or imitation thereof was not evident. Most articles dealt with the Werther phenomenon itself, and only a handful of suicides were found in which the deceased’s suicide was more or less directly attributed to Goethe’s Werther.

Reports of imitation

Some of the presumed imitation suicides already noted in previous literature were found in this search, such as the following:

In 1777, newspapers reported on a 17-year-old lovesick boy who died by suicide in Kiel, Germany. Just like the protagonist of Werther, the boy died by a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. The Swiss newspaper Zürcherische Freitagszeitung noted that the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther was found on the boy’s table, next to a suicide note in which the boy asked to be buried like Werther (Zürcherische Freitagszeitung, 1777). The Reichspostreuter, which also reported on the death of the young man, wrote that they could report on “more devastating events that are prompted by this book; however, we would cause sorrow to the bereaved family of the unlucky one, and a single example such as the one above suffices to prove the danger of this book” (Reichspostreuter, 1777, p. 3). The article went on to praise the cities in which the book had already been banned, yet it also stated that this prohibition might not be helpful enough and proposed to have a novel written in the likes of Goethe’s Werther that would denounce suicide, stating: “This would certainly be the strongest means to curb its detrimental effects” (Reichspostreuter, 1777, p. 3).

A 1922 essay titled “Das Werther-Fieber. Zum Jubiläum des Werther” (“The Werther Fever: Anniversary of Werther”) reports on five different instances in which Goethe’s Werther reportedly elicited copycat behavior. It states:

Close to Breslau, a girl tossed herself off the pediment of a house because the tenant’s son did not want to have her love. A student from Kiel named Karstens shot himself in his room: Werther’s story was found open in front of him. Shortly thereafter, the Capitan from Arenswald shot himself, finding the courage to do the deed in Werther. The free-death [suicide] of Christel von Laßberg in the waters of the Ilm, in close proximity to Goethe, caused the most stir, as did the self-murder of the Fräulein from Ickstadt who jumped off the tower of the Church of Our Lady in Munich.¹ (Salzburger Volksblatt, 1922, p. 3)

In addition to confirming presumed imitation suicides that have previously been stated in Werther effect research, the search conducted for this study produced new findings. These additional suicides are reported chronologically below.

In 1780, the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung reported the suicide of a young man who shot himself due to a broken heart. In his suicide note, the man asked to be buried in front of the apartment of “his Lotte” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 1780, p. 2).

In 1835, an Austrian paper related the story of a German woman who lived in Paris and fell in love with an artist but fancied that a rival might be the reason for her love’s sudden travels. Feeling brokenhearted, “she suffocated herself using coal fumes. Werther’s Sorrows was found next to her bed” (Wiener Theater-Zeitung, 1835, p. 4).

In 1845, a news article titled “A New Victim of Werther’s Sorrows” read, “More than 30 years after the publication of Goethe’s work mentioned in the title, a new person has fallen victim to the novel.” The article tells the story of a man who jumped ship and drowned, carrying a copy of the novel in his pocket: “The reading of which is (perhaps wrongly) said to have induced many warped minds before him” (Wiener Zeitung, 1845, p. 4).

In 1873, a male student died of a self-inflicted gunshot to the temple in a cemetery in Gießen, Germany (Neue Freie Presse, 1873). This suicide prompted another newspaper to write a feuilleton piece on its front page, titled “Confessions of a Self-Murderer²” (Salzburger Zeitung, 1873, p. 1), in which the deceased’s suicide note is reprinted in full and contains the sentence, “Ever since reading Goethe’s Werther, it will be easy for me to die” (Salzburger Zeitung, 1873, p. 2).

In the same year, just a few weeks later, a young man shot himself in Seebach, Germany. The Badischer Beobachter wrote, “Before the deed, the young man had read Werther’s Sorrows, the novel which lay next to him, covered in blood” (Badischer Beobachter, 1873, p. 3).

In 1876, an actress, mentioned by name in the Oldenburger Zeitung für Volk und Heimat, died by a self-inflicted gunshot to her heart. The article mentioned that Goethe’s novel Werther was found open beside her body (Oldenburger Zeitung für Volk und Heimat, 1876).

In 1880, a couple died by self-inflicted gunshot wounds in Salzburg, Austria. They were found alongside an open edition of The Sorrows of Young Werther. A newspaper article states that “this case is symptomatic for our time” (Linzer Volksblatt, 1880, p. 4).

In 1903, a woman died by suicide during a theater showing of Werther in Paris. She allegedly screamed “I, too, want to die for my son” during the act and shot herself into the chest (Berliner Tageblatt und Handelszeitung, 1903, p. 4).

Additional finding: Reports about a Werther-induced suicide epidemic

The search conducted for this study revealed a limited number of reports about specific cases in which Goethe’s novel did appear to play a role in a person’s suicide, yet it revealed a multitude of articles speaking of a “suicide epidemic” elicited by the novel. While the study’s aim was to identify specific cases of imitation, this additional finding is an interesting discovery: Just a few months after the novel was first published, the Reichspostreuter wrote, “We wish it was never written. Within [the novel], suicide is vindicated by ostensible reasoning, and young Werther’s actions are defended in all ways. We tremble thinking of the repercussions that may result for many” (Reichspostreuter, 1774). In 1898, in an essay condemning immoral writing that “glorifies vices and suicide,” the Grazer Volksblatt wrote, “How many thousands of suicides did Werther’s Sorrows alone elicit!” (Grazer Volksblatt, 1898, p. 2). Among other reasons, Die Zeit identifies imitation effects of novels as one rationale for suicide, stating that Goethe’s Werther elicited a suicide epidemic (Die Zeit, 1908). An article in the Reichspost, published in 1915, warns of the “poisoning of the mind, the will and the heart … through bad press, bad books, and newspapers” (Reichspost, 1915, p. 9). The article states, “It is said that Werther’s Sorrows elicited more suicides than it contains letters” (Reichspost, 1915, p. 10).

The search also revealed that Goethe’s Werther and its aftermath inspired many fiction novels and plays, including a book titled Das Wertherfieber (The Werther Craze) published just two years after The Sorrows of Young Werther (Gülich und bergische wöchentliche Nachrichten, 1776).

Discussion

Literature on the Werther effect has always relied on a handful of anecdotal stories as evidence of a spike in suicides attributed to the publication of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. This study attempts a more thorough investigation, limited, of course, by the availability of newspapers online (see Limitations below). This systematic search for news articles about imitation suicides attributed to the novel revealed n = 8 additional copycat suicides spanning three centuries. Just as Werther died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound, most of the deceased in the uncovered news reports died by the same means. The reasons why their deaths were attributed to the novel by the press usually stemmed from the fact that the book was found next to the deceased or was mentioned in a suicide note. The search also discovered considerably more articles promoting the idea of a Werther epidemic, possibly overstating the effects of the novel. It is possible that the novel did in fact elicit (a lot) more suicides and that newspapers did not report them, possibly even in an effort to contain “the spread” of the suicides. In fact, one newspaper explicitly wrote that it would deliberately not report on these events (Reichspostreuter, 1777), even though they would have had plenty of cases on which to report (see above). Today, it is impossible to determine whether other newspapers followed the same principle or whether there simply were not as many imitation suicides in the immediate aftermath of the publication as has previously been suggested.

It is also possible, however, that the press used the (few) examples to substantiate their moral argument that suicide should be condemned rather than vindicated. In fact, suicide was considered a sin in both Catholic and Protestant views and was a crime until the nineteenth century (Kuttelwascher, 1912). Indeed, it was not uncommon for suicide reports to contain moral judgments (Mestas & Arendt, 2022). In theory, it is possible, that the press overstated the strength of the factual imitation effect in order to amplify the argument against suicide per se.

Several novels published soon after Goethe’s Werther used the Werther-effect in their narratives (i.e., stories featuring protagonists who die by suicide inspired by Werther), a finding that is consistent with Appell (1855) and Bell (2011), speaks to this theory.

Looking at news reports of presumed Werther effects, rather than official suicide rates for the general public, provides an interesting perspective: News reports about the Werther craze and the imitation of the protagonist’s death by suicide may have led to a shift in social norms regarding the imitative effects of fictional suicides. Goethe’s Werther was one of the first pieces of fiction that reportedly elicited imitative effects, aside from Kabuki-plays in Japan (see above). The great amount of newspaper articles subsequently warning about imitation suicides (additional finding), points to the idea that the public’s perception of suicides in fiction shifted toward more awareness or possibly even more caution regarding media effects. At the same time however, the great number of novels and plays inspired by Goethe’s Werther shows that the topic was certainly timely and marketable.

Importantly, the findings suggest that Goethe’s novel did elicit imitation suicides. This study is the first to provide citable sources of news reports about imitation suicides attributed to The Sorrows of Young Werther. Whether or not the suicides associated with Goethe’s Werther found in this study, combined with those found in previous literature, substantiate a “Werther epidemic” remains up for debate. It is important to remember that these suicides are not merely numbers that prove or disprove the presence of an effect; these individual cases are tragic events that could possibly have been prevented.

Considering the centuries-long time span of this research’s findings, it is imperative that we apply this knowledge by continuing to pursue Werther effect research and trying to find ways to mitigate Werther effects. The approach to “use the past to study the present” (Lawrence, 1984) helps us to find ways to utilize these historical findings in today’s more fragmented entertainment environment. Chen et al. (2020) argue that a shift of the source for Werther effects from books to other (modern) forms of media could explain the fact that the authors found no Werther effect elicited by fiction books during the second half of the twentieth century. For example, the immersive, audio-visual experience of watching videos may enhance the likelihood of imitation in comparison to books, which rely on the reader’s pure imagination.

As more than 700,000 people die by suicide each year around the globe (World Health Organization [WHO], 2022), this topic is highly relevant and continues to attract the attention of fiction writers. In the aftermath of reports of imitation effects after the release of the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why (see Niederkrotenthaler et al., 2019), the World Health Organization published guidelines on how to safely portray suicide on screen (World Health Organization [WHO], 2019). In the same way, I argue that it is important to determine how to best portray suicide in fiction books without eliciting Werther effects and how best to disseminate guidelines for responsible handling of the matter in fiction writing.

Limitations

This study has several limitations. First, this study relies on news articles rather than on death certificates or other, more official, reports. This study did not investigate whether there was a rise in suicides in the general public, but systematically searched for news reports of suicides that the press of the time attributed to Goethe’s Werther. It is possible that the articles found overstated the connection between Goethe’s Werther and the reported suicides for the sake of sensationalism and a greater selling point. Causal interpretations should be made with caution, as we cannot verify whether or not any of the deceased had actually read (and then imitated) Goethe’s Werther. Suicide was historically underreported (Kuttelwascher, 1912), and death certificates did not contain a lot of information about the underlying circumstances for suicide; thus, official reports would likely not have been helpful in discovering any connections.

Second, the search merely included databases covering the DACH countries, the region where the novel reached its peak popularity, even though Werther was translated into multiple languages and was popular in other countries as well. Future studies could investigate imitation suicides in other countries.

Third, while keyword searches in online databases made this study possible, they come with a set of limitations, such as the accuracy of the word detection software. Furthermore, the search was limited to the available scanned and computer-legible pages of newspapers online. The fact that there are more recent newspapers from the late-nineteenth century and the twentieth century available online than there are eighteenth century newspapers surely impacted the search results.

Conclusion

Despite its limitations, the present study is the first to provide a systematic account of suicides attributed to Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. The fact that a search in historical newspapers discovered articles reporting imitative suicides across three centuries warrants more research into the imitation effects of fictional media. The number of suicides that this search revealed does not necessarily speak to a suicide epidemic elicited by the novel; however, I agree with Thorson and Öberg, who state, “whether we regard the events after Werther as an epidemic or not depends very much on how we define the term” (Thorson & Öberg, 2003, p. 71). Either way, the present study emphasizes the need for further research regarding fiction and possible imitation effects.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2023.2211363.

Additional information

Funding

The author received funding for proofreading services by the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Vienna, Austria.

Notes

1. Please note that the latter suicide (Fräulein from Ickstadt) has since been debunked (Bachleitner, 2017, p. 292).

2. Acknowledging that the use of this phrase is not preferred, I use the literal translation here instead of paraphrasing it to “a person who died by suicide,” as this would not retain its meaning. At the time, German-speaking countries used the word Selbstmord, which literally translates to self-murder, rather than the word Suizid (suicide) which is mainly used today.