Thomas Mann, fascinated with the concept for genius and with the richness of German culture, found in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe the embodiment of the German culture hero. Mann's novelistic biography of Geothe was first published in English in 1940. Lotte In Weimar is a vivid dual portrait - a complex study of Goethe and of Lotte, the still-vivacious woman who in her youth was the model for Charlotte in Goethe's widely-read, The Sorrows of Young Werther. Lotte's thoughts as she anticipates meeting Goethe again after forty years and her conversations with those in Weimar who know the great man allow Mann to assess Goethe's genius from many points of view. Hayden White's fresh appraisal of the novel reveals its consonances with our own concerns.