# Weygand in Leipzig publishes Die Leiden des jungen Werthers

Date: 1774

## The fact

In autumn 1774 the Leipzig publisher Weygand issued Die Leiden des jungen Werthers. The dated public instrument is that first printing. It is not a medical study and not the later ‘Werther effect’ paper.

## Context

The book made a Frankfurt lawyer famous across Europe. Shared reading is a cohesion gain. Imitative suicide, later measured, is a separate worsening Fact. Bans in some cities are also separate.

[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe](/people/johann-wolfgang-von-goethe) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

National-library catalogues and a public-domain English text independently document the work’s printed existence.

Official or archival record: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (https://www.dnb.de/; Deutsche Nationalbibliothek).

## Significance

Improving access-to-feeling path. High confidence on the printing.

Print access and contagion harm are different instruments. Split them.

## What is established and what is not

Established: Werther was printed in 1774. Not established: a 1774 death tally caused by the book.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is [social-cohesion](/drivers/social-cohesion). The welfare reading used in this dossier is improving. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here. Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is social-cohesion. The welfare reading used in this dossier is improving. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: https://factrail.ai/people/johann-wolfgang-von-goethe

## Drivers

- Social Cohesion: https://factrail.ai/drivers/social-cohesion

## Sources

- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2527
- https://www.dnb.de/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/go-werther-print-1774