Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns
 First US edition | |
| Author | Thomas Mann |
|---|---|
| Original title | Lotte in Weimar |
| Language | German |
| Publisher | Gottfried Bermann Fischer (Stockholm) Secker & Warburg (UK) Knopf (US) |
Publication date | 1939 |
| Publication place | Germany |
Published in English | 1940 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 342 (hardback edition) |
Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns, otherwise known as Lotte in Weimar (German: [ˈlɔ.tə ɪn ˈvaɪ.̯maʁ] ⓘ) or The Beloved Returns, is a 1939 novel by Thomas Mann. It is a story written in the shadow of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; Mann developed the narrative almost as a response to Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, which is more than 150 years older than Lotte in Weimar. Lotte in Weimar was first published in English in 1940.
Plot summary
The Beloved Returns is the story of one of Goethe's old romantic interests, a real historical figure by the name of Charlotte Kestner née Buff, who has come to Weimar to see him again after more than 40 years of separation. Goethe had romanced Charlotte when they were young, but she had already been engaged (and then married) to another man whom she truly loved. Ultimately, the romance ended unconsummated; afterwards, Goethe wrote a fictional depiction of these events, with some artistic changes, and published it under the title The Sorrows of Young Werther—a still famous book, which brought early renown to Goethe. The real Charlotte became inadvertently and unwillingly famous, and remained so for the rest of her life to a certain degree.
Her return in some ways is due to her need to settle the "wrongs" done to her by Goethe in his creation of Werther; one of the underlying motifs in the story is the question of what sacrifices both a "genius" and the people around him/her must make to promote his/her creations, and whether Goethe remained distanced even to friends and family members, exploited others' talents and sympathy, and was ultimately guided only by his interests. Most of the novel is written as dialogues between Charlotte and other residents of Weimar, who give their own opinions on the issue of Goethe's genius.
Only in the last third of the book, starting with the internal monologue in the seventh chapter, is the reader finally directly confronted with Goethe and what he himself thinks of the entire affair.
Lotte in Weimar echoes in subtle ways both Mann's respect for and his demythologizing approach to Goethe.
Quotation at the Nuremberg Trials
On 27 July 1946 Hartley Shawcross, Chief Prosecutor for the UK at the Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals, at the end of his final argument, told the International Military Tribunal:
- "Years ago Goethe said of the German people that some day fate would strike them ...
- ... would strike them because they betrayed themselves and did not want to be what they are. It is sad that they do not know the charm of truth, that mist, smoke, and berserk immoderation are so dear to them, pathetic that they ingenuously submit to any mad scoundrel who appeals to their lowest instincts, who confirms them in their vices and teaches them to conceive nationalism as isolation and brutality."
- With what a voice of prophecy he spoke—for these are the mad scoundrels who did those very things."
Later Shawcross expressed his hope that by the judgement of the court could in the future
- "those other words of Goethe be translated into fact, not only, as we must hope, of the German people but of the whole community of man:
- ... thus ought the German people to behave: giving and receiving from the world, their hearts open to every fruitful source of wonder, great through understanding and love, through mediation and the spirit-thus ought they to be; that is their destiny."[1]
Within a few days, the British press was commenting that these were not Goethe's words at all but words put into his mouth by Thomas Mann in the seventh chapter of his novel Lotte in Weimar. On 16 August 1946 Mann, then living in Pacific Palisades, California, received a letter from the British ambassador in Washington inquiring “whether you put the words into Goethe’s mouth or whether they are an actual quotation from the latter’s works. If they do represent an actual quotation, I should be very glad if you could let me know in which work they appear. It is, of course, possible that they are a passage from a contemporary or later commentator. Should this be the case, perhaps you would be good enough to say where you got them from.”
Mann answered the ambassador: "It is true, the quoted words do not appear literally in Goethe's writings or conversations; but they were conceived and formulated strictly in his spirit and although he never spoke them, he might well have done so." For Goethe's monologue in the novel many quotations had been "modified and variegated for poetic purposes.” On the other hand, the monologue contained much which Goethe had never said but was so much in line with what one knew of his thinking that it could be called authentic. Therefore, in a higher sense the words the British prosecutor had used were indeed Goethe's.[2][3][4]
In his The Story of a Novel: The Genesis of Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann later explained that already during the war a few copies of Lotte in Weimar had been smuggled into Germany from Switzerland and that opponents of the regime had distributed a compilation of excerpts from the monologue in the seventh chapter under the camouflage title “From Goethe’s Conversations with Riemer”. A copy or a translation had come into the hands of Sir Hartley Shawcross, who, finding its content striking, in good faith had used it extensively in his final argument.
Release details
- 1939, Sweden, Bermann-Fischer, 1939, hardback (first edition)
- 1940, UK, Secker & Warburg, 1940, hardback (Eng. trans. by H. T. Lowe-Porter, first edition)
- 1940, US, Albert A. Knopf, 1940, hardback (US Eng trans. first edition)
- 1990, US, Univ. of California Press ISBN 0-520-07007-0, November 1990, paperback
Film adaptation
The novel was filmed in 1974 by Egon Günther, with Lilli Palmer in the title role.
References
- "The trial of German major war criminals : proceedings of the International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg Germany". avalon.law.yale.edu.
- [1] [permanent dead link]
- Lotte in Weimar, Kommentar by Werner Frizen, S. Fischer ISBN 3-10-048335-9, pp. 171-2
- Klaus Harprecht, Thomas Mann - Eine Biographie, Rowohlt 1995, pp. 1756-8
External links
Media related to Lotte in Weimar at Wikimedia Commons- First edition 1939
- To learn more about Goethe's works, or to find copies in English or German, one could visit Project Gutenberg.
- To learn more about the city of Weimar, one could visit the webpage.
- Film adaptation Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns at IMDb
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뉘른베르크 재판에서의 인용문
1946년 7월 27일 , 주요 전범에 대한 뉘른베르크 재판 에서 영국의 수석 검사였던 하틀리 쇼크로스는 마지막 변론을 마치며 국제 군사 재판에서 다음과 같이 말했습니다 .
- "수년 전 괴테는 독일 국민에 대해 언젠가 운명이 그들에게 닥칠 것이라고 말했습니다...
- ... 그들은 스스로를 배신하고 있는 그대로의 자신이 되고 싶지 않았기 때문에 그들을 공격할 것입니다. 그들이 진실의 매력을 모른다는 것은 슬픈 일입니다. 안개, 연기, 그리고 광란의 과격함이 그들에게는 너무나 소중하고, 그들의 가장 저급한 본능에 호소하고, 그들의 악행을 확신시키며, 민족주의를 고립과 잔혹함으로 생각하도록 가르치는 어떤 미친 악당에게도 순진하게 굴복하는 것은 한심하기 짝이 없습니다.
- 그는 얼마나 예언적인 목소리로 말했는가!이들은 바로 그런 일을 저지른 미친 악당들이기 때문이다."
나중에 Shawcross는 법원의 판결에 따라 미래에 가능할 수 있기를 희망한다고 표현했습니다.
- "괴테의 다른 말은 우리가 바라는 대로 독일 국민뿐만 아니라 인류 공동체 전체에 적용될 수 있는 사실로 번역되어야 합니다.
- ... 독일 국민은 이렇게 행동해야 합니다. 세상으로부터 주고받으며, 경이로움의 모든 풍요로운 원천에 마음을 열고, 이해와 사랑으로, 중재와 정신으로 위대해져야 합니다. 이것이 바로 독일 국민의 운명입니다." [ 1 ]
며칠 만에 영국 언론은 이것이 괴테의 말이 전혀 아니고 토마스 만이 그의 소설 바이마르의 로테 의 7장에서 그의 입에 넣은 말이라고 논평했습니다 . 1946년 8월 16일, 당시 캘리포니아주 퍼시픽 팰리세이즈 에 살고 있던 만은 워싱턴 주재 영국 대사로부터 편지를 받았는데, 그 내용은 "괴테의 입에 넣은 말인지 아니면 그의 작품에서 실제로 인용한 것인지"였습니다. "만약 실제 인용이라면 어떤 작품에 나오는지 알려주시면 감사하겠습니다. 물론 동시대 또는 후대 평론가의 발췌문일 가능성도 있습니다. 만약 그렇다면 어디서 따온 것인지 알려주시면 감사하겠습니다."
만은 대사에게 이렇게 답했다. "인용된 단어들이 괴테의 글이나 대화에 문자 그대로 등장하는 것은 아닙니다. 하지만 그 단어들은 그의 정신 속에서 엄격하게 구상되고 표현된 것이었고, 그가 직접 말한 적은 없지만, 아마도 그렇게 했을 것입니다." 소설 속 괴테의 독백에서 많은 인용문이 "시적인 목적을 위해 수정되고 다채롭게" 표현되었다. 반면, 그 독백에는 괴테가 직접 말한 적이 없는 내용이 많이 포함되어 있었지만, 그의 생각에 대해 알고 있는 것과 매우 일치하여 진솔하다고 할 수 있었다. 따라서 더 높은 의미에서 영국 검사가 사용한 단어들은 실제로 괴테의 것이었다. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ]
토마스 만은 그의 저서 『소설 이야기: 파우스트 박사의 기원』 에서 전쟁 중에 이미 『바이마르의 로테 』 몇 부가 스위스에서 독일로 밀반입되었고, 정권 반대자들이 7장에 나오는 독백 발췌문을 "괴테와 리머의 대화"라는 위장 제목으로 배포했다고 설명했습니다. 이 책의 사본이나 번역본이 하틀리 쇼크로스 경의 손에 들어갔는데, 그는 그 내용이 인상 깊어 자신의 마지막 변론에서 이를 적극적으로 활용했습니다.
