GOETHE (JOHANN WOLFGANG VON)

Bey Allerhöchster anwesenheit Ihro Majestät der Kaiserin Maria Feodorovana in Weimar Maskenzug, FIRST EDITION, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR ("Fraeulein/ Louise von Werther/ fur thaetige Theilnahme/ danckbar/ Goethe/ Weimar/ d. 20 May/ 1819"), [Privately Printed], 1818

Footnotes

PRESENTATION COPY FROM GOETHE OF THIS RARE PRIVATELY PRINTED MASQUERADE, INSCRIBED TO LOUISE VON WERTHERN, who played the role of Epos in the Prologue.

The masquerade took place in Weimar on 18 December 1818, and was held in celebration the visit of the Empress Maria Feodorovna, mother of Alexander I of Russia, to her daughter Maria Pavlovna Romanov (1786-1859), who had married Carl Friedrich, Crown Prince of Saxe-Weimar in 1804. The procession and grand ball saw over a hundred Weimar courtiers donning costumes or masks, among them Goethe himself (as Mephistopheles), von Münchhausen, Schiller (Götz von Berlichingen), Schopenhauer and Frau von Goethe. Goethe's text, written and published anonymlously, was probably distributed to the guests and participants, and comprises his dramatic poem with a prologue and epilogue, a description of the masked procession, and a list of the performers. The first trade edition was published by Cotta in Stuttgart in 1819, with a cover bearing the title 'Festgedichte Weimar 18ter December 1818'. It was to be the last of 14 masquerades (Maskenzüge) composed by Goethe for the Weimar court feasts.

The inscription to "Louise von Werther" is intriguing. It does seem very strange, or perhaps mischievous, that Goethe should both use the French spelling of 'Louise' and leave the 'n' off her surname, transforming it into that of his famous character Werther (the loosely autobiographical protagonist in the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, 'Die Leiden des jungen Werthers'). This same mistake is also found twice in the printed list of performers, where the missing final 'n' in "Fr. von Werther" and "Frl. von Werther" is supplied in pencil.

The surname is that of the von Werthern-Beichlingen family, of which Goethe knew several members, in particular his contemporary the countess Johanna Luisa von Werthern, whom he considered as "the best of the countesses". She died in 1811 so cannot be the Frau von Werther who played the role of Ximene; but the Fräulein von Werther[n] who played Epos would appear to be Luise Clara von Werthern-Beichingen (1798-1891), who married Hans Heinrich Graf Könneritz in 1820.