Goethe on Demand: 150 Years of Thomas Mann

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of Thomas Mann’s birth, the Goethe-Institut is joining historical societies, libraries, theaters, and other cultural organizations around the world to present work by and about the Nobel-winning author. Find out more at Zeitgeister, the cultural magazine of the Goethe-Institut.

Based on Thomas Mann’s 1939 novel, Lotte in Weimar unpacks a multi-layered literary love story with one of Germany’s other great men at its center: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. As a young man, Goethe immortalized his early love, Charlotte Kestner, as the character Lotte in his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. Decades later, the widowed Charlotte returns to Weimar to reconnect with her former lover, though the world has changed since their last meeting and the sparks of young passion can rarely be recaptured.
Lotte in Weimar was the first film to ever represent the GDR at the Cannes Film Festival, where director Egon Günther was nominated for the Palme d’Or.

Lotte in Weimar
Dir. Egon Günther
GDR, 1975
119 min.
With Lilli Palmer, Martin Hellberg, Rolf Ludwig, Hilmar Baumann, Jutta Hoffmann, Katharina Thalbach, Monika Lennartz, Norbert Christian, Hans-Joachim Hegewald, Walter Lendrich