As Friederike had fitted into the background of Goethe's Strassburg life, Lotte into that of Wetzlar, and Lili into the gaieties of Frankfort, so now Charlotte von Stein, the wife of a Weimar official, was the personification of the more aristocratic ideals of Weimar society.
The town preserves associations of Goethe, who wrote Die Leiden des jungen Werthers after living here in 1772 as a legal official, and of Charlotte Buff, the Lotte of Werther.