Charlotte Buff

…by Goethe’s earlier attachment to Charlotte Buff.

…of marriage since the woman, Charlotte (“Lotte”) Buff, was already engaged. After an emotionally tormenting summer, spent largely with her and her fiancé, Goethe in September wrenched himself away and returned to Frankfurt. A little later he heard that another young Wetzlar lawyer he had slightly known, Carl Wilhelm Jerusalem,…

Lotte Kestner, the heroine of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, his semi-autobiographical story of unrequited love and romantic despair, visits Weimar in old age to see once again her old lover, now famous, and win some acknowledgment from him. But Goethe remains distant and…