Werther's Others: From Plenzdorf to Pirinçci

Abstract

In Die Leiden des neuen W. (1973), Ulrich Plenzdorf establishes textual links with Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774) by both quoting from it in his text and using some of its characters and segments of the plot as a foil for his own characters and plot development. Critical discussions of the textual relationship between Die Leiden des jungen Werthers and Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. usually refer to the latter as adaptation, parody, Werther-Paraphrase (Herzfelde, in Brenner 174), Wertheriade (Reis), or Werther-Travestie (Karthaus). This appropriation had a special status in the literature of the GDR where Marxist-Leninist Erbe-Aneignung played a major role in the identity formation of the new state and its literature. During the founding years of the GDR, Lessing, Schiller, and especially Goethe, represented the literary heritage and were celebrated as the pillars of humanism and were not to be removed from their pedestals. Socialist reinterpretations of classical texts such as Eisler's opera Faust in 1952 and Brecht's adaptations of Lenz's Hofmeister in 1951 were therefore negatively received (see Scharfschwerdt 251). With time, however, as Peter J. Brenner observes, it became obvious that the