SOURCE: Edmunds, Kathryn R. “Lenz and Werther: Büchner's Strategic Response to Goethe.” Monatshefte für deutschen Unterricht, deutsche Sprache und Literatur 88, no. 2 (summer 1996): 176-96.

In the following essay, Edmunds contrasts the narrative structure and effects of Lenz with those of Goethe's novel Werther, asserting Büchner's tacit rejection of Goethe's literary worldview in his novella.

In Dichtung und Wahrheit (Book XIV, published 1814) Goethe explicitly diagnoses Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz's anti-social self-absorption as a result of his Werther-like suffering: “[er] litt … im allgemeinen von der Zeitgesinnung, welche durch die Schilderung Werthers abgeschlossen sein sollte,”¹ but Goethe is careful to distinguish Lenz from the truly Werther-like “redliche Seelen” to the extent that Lenz's behavior seemed exaggerated and voluntary. Roughly twenty years later Georg Büchner also associates the Storm and Stress poet with Werther, although not so explicitly; and, whereas Goethe is openly critical of Lenz, Büchner is...