Who Is the Editor in Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers?

Summary

FEW CRITICS HAVE TAKEN UP THE QUESTION of who the Editor (der Herausgeber) of Werther's letters and notes might be. That is, no certainty exists as to the identity of the person who not only prepared these materials for publication but also added an important report on the results of his interviews with those closest to Werther during the last days before his suicide. Also, there has been no satisfactory answer to the question of what would have prompted the Editor to publish the material collected and to add the report on the last days of Werther's life. Jürgen Nelles, who devotes a long study to the importance of the Editor in shaping the novel, simply states that there is no possibility of identifying that person and dismisses the suggestion that it might be Wilhelm, Werther's friend and the recipient of the bulk of his letters, by quoting Emil Staiger's verdict that there is no basis in the text for this assumption. I will try to prove below that Staiger is wrong, that the Editor must indeed be Wilhelm. I will show that such identification solves a number of problems that present themselves when trying to understand the Editor's attitude toward Werther. In addition, equating the Editor with Wilhelm will shed light on important aspects of the preface and will explain the reason behind the publication of the book. Finally, I will suggest a possible solution to the change of point of view at the end of the novel when the Editor reports on Werther's state of mind and thus gives information that he could not possibly have known.