Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Lotte meine Lotte: Die Briefe von Goethe an Charlotte von Stein, 1776-1786. With an afterword by Jan Volker Rohnert. 2 vols. Berlin: Die Andere Bibliothek, 2014. 731 pp. Albrecht Schone, Der Briefschreiber Goethe. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2015. 537 pp.Lotte meine Lotte and Der Briefschreiber Goethe are beautifully produced. The first, two volumes of Goethe's letters to Charlotte von Stein, is a bibliophile edition by Die Andere Bibliothek (I am in possession of nos. 2,229 and 2,605 of 4,400 copies) complete with silhouetted slipcovers as well as deep-pink endpapers and rose and pale-cyan half-title pages and binding. Likewise, the production values of the study by Albrecht Schone leave nothing to be desired: the text is set in the old orthography and includes endpapers (front and back) reproducing a two-page letter from Goethe to Herder and twenty enlightening illustrations. Both books are a joy to handle and to read. Published within six months of one another, they prompt consideration of a relatively neglected contribution to Goethe's artistic and personal formation, namely, his correspondence.Let me begin with Lotte meine Lotte. It is with something like awe that one reads these letters (alternately and mostly, Zettelgen, Billets) consecutively, which must have been the public's reaction when they first appeared in Alfred Scholl's edition of 1848 (3rd ed., 1899). Goethe wrote upward of 1,700 letters to Charlotte between 1776 and 1786, a period of his life about which he himself was mostly silent. The last of the Weimar originals, Karl Ludwig von Knebel, had died in 1834, and before Scholl's publication the scholarly Goethe industry had to rely for information about this decade on the rather sparse diary Goethe kept, correspondence and observations of others, and, of course, the poetic works. This didn't keep writers like Henry Crabbe Robinson and George Henry Lewes from passing on gossip concerning the liaison between the baroness and Goethe, even suggesting that Goethe was guilty of causing Ehebruch. (I am reminded of the speculations concerning the relationship between Charles Dickens and the actress Ellen Ternan, about which much scholarly lucubration has likewise failed to unearth the silver bullet.)Besides Scholl, Jonas Frankel published a two-volume edition in 1908, which was republished in 1958 by Akademie-Verlag, with an additional one-volume commentary and critical apparatus by Frankel. This edition is still in print and, like Scholl's, also contains the letters that Charlotte wrote to Goethe between 1794 and 1826. A third publication of the correspondence was that of Reclam in 1908, edited by Julius Petersen, and it is from Petersen that the present volumes are drawn. Lotte meine Lotte thus appears without an editor as such, but alongside its bibliophilic attractions, it includes an excellent afterword by the contemporary German poet Jan Volker Rohnert.To return to the awe. will not attempt to add anything to the controversy over the status of the relationship-which has been done sufficiently-but instead will concur with Rohnert that, in toto, the letters represent a gesteigerter Werther (despite Goethe's asseveration, in a letter to Charlotte of November 2, 1779: Gott moge mich behuten, dass ich nicht ie wieder in den Fall komme, einen [neuen Werther] zu schreiben und schreiben zu konnen). Rather than expressing his ardor for a beloved Lotte via William, Goethe now addresses himself directly to a similarly named, likewise-unavailable lady of much higher station. How many ways can one say I love you? Try this one on for size (dated Monday June 28-Thursday, July 1, 1784): Ja liebe Lotte ietzt wird es mir erst deutlich wie du meine eigne Halfte bist und bleibst. Ich bin kein einzelnes kein selbstandiges Wesen. Alle meine Schwachen habe ich an dich angelehnt, meine weichen Seiten durch dich beschutzt, meine Lucken durch dich ausgefullt. Wenn ich nun entfernt von dir bin so wird mein Zustand hochst seltsam. …