Werther, a young German student, of poetic fancy and very sensitive disposition, who falls in love with Lotte (2 syl.), the betrothed and afterwards the wife of Albert. Werther becomes acquainted with Lotte’s husband, who invites him to stay with him as a guest. In this visit his love blazes out into a terrible passion, and after vainly striving to fight it down, he puts an end to his misery by shooting himself.--Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774).
⁂ Goethe represents himself, or rather one of the moods of his mind, in the character of Werther. The catastrophe, however, is borrowed from the fate of a schoolfellow of his named Jerusalem, who shot himself on account of a hopeless passion for a married woman. “Albert” and “Lotte” were sketched from his friends Albert and Charlotte Kestner, a young couple with whom he had relations not unlike those of Werther in the early part of the story with the fictitious characters.
Werther of Politics. The marquis of Londonderry is so called by Lord Byron. Werther, the personification of maudlin sentimentality, is the hero of Goethe’s romance entitled The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774).
It is the first time since the Normans that England has been insulted by a minister who could not speak English, and that parliament permitted itself to be dictated to in the language of Mrs. Malaprop.... Let us hear no more of this man, and let Ireland remove the ashes of her Grattan from the sanctuary of Westminster. Shall the Patriot of Humanity repose by the Werther of Politics?--Byron, Don Juan (preface to canto vi., etc., 1824).
Wessel (Peder), a tailor’s apprentice, who rose to the rank of vice-admiral of Denmark, in the reign of Christian V. He was called Tor´denskiold (3 syl.), corrupted into Tordenskiol (the “Thunder Shield”), and was killed in a duel.
North Sea! a glimpse of Wessel rent
Thy murky sky ...
From Denmark thunders Tordenskiol;
Let each to heaven commend his soul,
And fly.