The productive force of friendship in literary history

‘[L]aß das Büchlein deinen Freund sein’Footnote1 — Already in the preface to what would become the first international bestseller of German literature, the theme of friendship is foregrounded as a central concern of the text. Die Leiden des jungen Werther seeks to offer consolation and encouragement to readers who find themselves in a similarly desperate situation as Goethe’s protagonist Werther, thereby assuming the role of a supportive companion.Footnote2 At the same time, the novel’s epistolary structure — a series of letters written by Werther to his friend Wilhelm — emulates a correspondence between close friends. Readers are implicitly invited to adopt Wilhelm’s perspective and thereby assume his role as Werther’s confidant. Within the narrative itself, friendship emerges as a recurring motif, most notably in the context of the tragic love triangle involving Werther, Lotte, and Albert. The relationship between Werther and Albert is characterized by a complex dynamic in which friendship and rivalry become intricately intertwined.Footnote3 At the same time, Lotte proposes friendship as a potential alternative to the obsessive passion Werther develops for her. Indeed, shortly before Werther’s suicide, she urges him to redirect his love toward someone else, in order that Lotte and Werther might be free to enjoy ‘die Seligkeit einer wahren Freundschaft’.Footnote4

The significance of friendship in the novel extends beyond its fictional framework to encompass its real-world inspirations: Goethe’s friendships with Charlotte Buff, Johann Christian Kestner, and their mutual acquaintance Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem. At the same time, the literary movement of Empfindsamkeit, which both shaped Werther and became the object of Goethe’s critical engagement within the novel, was deeply rooted in contemporary practices of friendship, literature and sociability — from the Darmstädter Empfindsamer Kreis and Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim’s Freundschaftstempel in Halberstadt to the Göttinger Hainbund and Sophie von La Roche’s literary salon in Koblenz — to name just a few examples. Friendship and the practices associated with it had already left a profound mark on German literature prior to Werther and continued to do so well beyond it. Werther thus exemplifies the close interrelation between literary representations of friendship and the lived practice of friendship as a condition of literary production. Such portrayals not only serve to educate and inspire readers in the cultivation of friendship but also reflect the friendships among authors that often underpinned and enabled the creation of literature itself.

With this special issue, we would like to direct closer attention to the immense productivity of friendship in both regards: as a practice preceding, and accompanying, if not even conditioning the creation of literary text and as a practice reflected in literature as fiction. Friendship is here understood as a relationship between two or moreFootnote5 individuals who find a form of closeness that transcends biological kinship and cannot be (fully) subsumed under the category of romantic love. As several contributions to this issue demonstrate, however, the language of friendship may nonetheless draw on familial and romantic idioms, with friends at times addressed as brothers, sisters, or loved ones.