Mrs. Art Werth complains of Catherine May's supposed fiscal inconsistencies in her letter discussing the Hanford NPR reactor and government spending. She claims it is difficult to teach her children how to save money, when their role models are, ".vastly unconcerned about the debts our children and theirs will inherit." May responds with a restatement of her reasons for supporting the Hanford project, and states that such a multi-purpose endeavor has numerous long-term economic advantages.
Abstract: Background: Reporting on suicide can elicit an increase in suicides, a phenomenon termed the "Werther effect." The name can be traced back to an alleged spike in suicides after the publication of Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774, in which the protagonist Werther dies by suicide. Aims: Acknowledging the importance and primacy of systematic ecological and individual-level studies, we provide a historical single-case report of the suicide of a "late arrival of the Werther epidemic," as the death was headlined in a news report in 1927. Method: Archival research on tenor Paul Vidal's suicide was conducted. Results: Vidal reconstructed the scene of the final act of the opera Werther in his apartment and died by a gunshot, as did Werther. Limitations: Causal interpretations must be made with caution. Conclusion: Striking similarities between Werther's and Vidal's deaths support the idea of strong identification with the fictional narrative and suggest causal effects. Considering the repeated high level of immersiveness and the intense emotions of opera performances, it is likely that performing the role of Werther increases identification processes, contributing to detrimental effects. The lack of knowledge regarding the role of fictional suicide stories on artists' suicides is discussed.
Abstract. Background: Alfred Redl, a colonel in the Imperial and Royal General Staff and Deputy Director of Military Intelligence for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was a leading figure of pre-World War I spying. The "spy of the century," as he has been called, died by suicide in Vienna on May 25, 1913. It was a big news story based on espionage, sex, and betrayal. Aim: We aimed to test whether this celebrity suicide elicited an increase in suicides – a phenomenon consistent with the "Werther effect." Method: Given daily suicide numbers were not available, we conducted archival research. Civil death registers for the city of Vienna were used to identify suicides before and after Redl's suicide. Results: The analysis indicated that more people died by suicide in the immediate aftermath and that the quantity of news reporting on Colonel Redl predicted the number of suicides per day – a pattern that is consistent with the Werther effect. Limitations: Causal interpretations are limited. Conclusion: Given the fact that the "Redl affair" is relevant for many scientific disciplines, we discuss multiple contributions to suicide research, history, media research, and research on intelligence and counter-intelligence.
Abstract. Background: Suicide rates increased substantially in many countries during the 19th century. Little is known about news coverage on suicide in this period and its relationship to suicide rates. Aims: To test whether there was a covariation between the quantity of reporting and suicide rates and whether the press relied on sensational reporting. Method: A content analysis of Austrian news coverage between 1819 and 1944 was conducted and compared with contemporary findings. Results: There were similar corresponding troughs and peaks in both time series, indicative of covariation. The analysis revealed that variations in the quantity of reporting predicted the following year's suicide rates, a pattern consistent with a long-term Werther effect. Conversely, suicide rates did not predict future values of the quantity of reporting. Furthermore, the press substantially overrepresented "vivid" firearm suicides compared with other more "pallid" methods such as drowning, indicative of sensational reporting. Limitations: The causal order of the quantity of reporting and suicide rates should be interpreted with caution. Conclusion: The press may have contributed to the establishment of suicide as a mass phenomenon in the 19th century. The contemporary comparison is indicative of temporal stability.
Abstract This study analyzes the "sick-lit" narrative phenomenon, a story writing genre rooted in self-harm and suicide, which seems to be gaining remarkable popularity amongst adolescents. This success is a symptom of young people's need to address the issue of death. The qualitative research was composed of two parts: the first explored the ambivalent representation of sick-lit on the internet, where two opposing factions argue about its educative usefulness vs. its potentially dangerous copycat effect. The second part investigated six novels and their representations of self-harm, death, sufferance and suicide. The analysis confuted the idea that sick-lit may be a positive instrument for making adolescents aware of mortality and showed the need to transform the Werther risk effect into the Papageno possibility by exploring the content of these books with adolescents in death education courses.
This essay serves as the introduction to the authors' translation of Karl Knies' essay "Die nationaloekonomische Lehre vom Werth" (1855). Knies is one of the acknowledged founders of the Older German Historical School, and yet in recent years several writers have described his 1855 essay as seminal in the evolution of marginal utility analysis. The authors examine how Knies develops his nascent theory of marginal reasoning in his essay, arguing that rather than cling to his earlier historicist programmatic, Knies attempts to discover general laws; however, not by strict causal analysis but by a typical 'German art' of taxonomy and classification that resembles juridical argumentations. This results in an ambiguous text, which influenced several marginalist pioneers who studied under Knies at Heidelberg (including Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Friedrich von Wieser, and John Bates Clark), as well as several members of the Younger German Historical School (including Gustav von Schmoller).
Viele Studien haben bisher das Bild des Orients und des arabischen Raums bei Goethe untersucht, wie Goethe die anderen Kulturen und Literaturen sah. Meine Arbeit jedoch nähert sich dem Thema erstmals, wenn man so will, von der anderen Seite. Denn sie steht unter den Leitfragen: Wie ist das Bild Goethes in der arabischen Welt konturiert? Wie wurde und wird Goethe in der arabischen Literatur dargestellt? Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die Schwerpunkte der arabischen Rezeption deutscher Literatur vom 20. bis zu den Anfängen des 21. Jahrhunderts, wobei insbesondere auf Johann Wolfgang von Goethe und seinen Briefroman Die Leiden des jungen Werthers Bezug genommen wird. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei die Entwicklung der Rezeption, also die Interaktion zwischen Leser und Text, ohne dabei die Rolle des ursprünglichen Autors zu vernachlässigen. Als theoretische Grundlage der Forschung dient die Rezeptionstheorie von Hans Robert Jauß, in welcher der historisch-ästhetische Erwartungshorizont der literarischen Erfahrung im Zentrum steht, wobei das Werk-Rezipient-Verhältnis sowohl die Aktivierung wie auch die Obejktivierung dieser Erwartung umfasst. Der Schwerpunkt liegt dabei vor allem auf der Frage, wie die deutsche Literatur von den Arabern zunächst übersetzt und gelesen, insbesondere aber darauf, mit welcher Wahrscheinlichkeit sie gemäß ihren intendierten Aussagen rezipiert wird. So ist etwa die Arbeit des Übersetzers bei der Auswahl des zu übertragenden Stoffes sehr entscheidend. In der angemessenen Übertragung etwa bildlicher Sprache liegt auch ein schöpferischer Aspekt, und die Übersetzung literarischer Texte, für die ihre ästhetische Form konstitutiv ist, unterscheidet sich somit stark von Übersetzungen von Texten, bei denen die Vermittlung von Informationen im Vordergrund steht. Unter diesem Blickwinkel wird die Übersetzung selbst als Prozess der Rezeption betrachtet, im dem der Übersetzer als ein erster Leser fungiert, der vor allem die Wirkung des literarischenTextes mitrezipiert und innerhalb seines Kulturkreises ...
