Die neuen Leiden des jungen W.

Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. (The new Sorrows of Young W.) is an analytic collage-style novel (montage novel) and play by Ulrich Plenzdorf.

Plenzdorf wrote Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. using the East German (DDR) youth's slang of the 1970s as a societal critique. It tells the story of a young man, who wants to escape from his small middle class environment. Reading Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, he discovers similarities between him and the book's protagonist. The debut performance was on May 18, 1972 in Halle (Saale) with Reinhard Straube in the main role. It had a big success in the DDR. Later it was successfully played in the West Germany (BRD), too. In 1976 the play was made into a film in the BRD by Eberhard Itzenplitz.

Edgar Wibeau's father left when Edgar was five. After Edgar's death at the age of 17, his father wants to know who his son was and begins interviewing people who knew him.

Raised by his mother during the GDR-era, Edgar is a good son and an excellent student. After an argument with his apprenticeship supervisor, Flemming, however, he rejects authority and leaves his hometown of Mittenberg and, with his friend Willi, moves to Berlin, where he feels he can be free to follow his own desires.

Discovered by chance, Goethe's book about Werther (whom Edgar often calls, in original English, "Old Werther") becomes a verbal weapon Edgar uses to solve inconvenient situations. The young rebel isn't successful as an artist and thinks that he's underestimated by the people a bit.

He starts working as a house painter. His co-workers Addi and Zaremba dream of a revolutionary invention, a nebula-free paint duster, but fail to put their plan into practice. Edgar secretly tries to build the machine by himself at his alcove. As soon as he tries out his prototype for the first time, he is killed by the voltage. Whether this death was intentional or not is left for the reader to decide.

Originally, Plenzdorf wanted the protagonist to kill himself, but suicide was not an acceptable theme in the GDR.

In the beginning of the plot Edgar is already dead. The story begins shortly after the publishing of the death notices, when the father visits the mother's flat, where she raised Edgar without a husband. The father tries to find out more about Edgar, to "get to know" him. He talks to Willi, Charlie, Addi. Although Edgar is already dead, he makes long monologues on the things his friends mention - but only the reader can hear him. Edgar illustrates his inner feelings by quoting Goethe on music tapes to Willi.

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