WERTHER'S ORIGINAL APPEAL derived not only from its articulation of a new generation's sensibilities, but also from the titillating effect of its being a roman à clef. Everyone knew that Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem's shocking suicide in 1772 was the model for Werther's death. Indeed, most readers considered that prominent clergyman's son and Goethe's fictional hero to be interchangeable. When Friedrich Christian Laukhard, writing in 1792, recalled the Werther-inspired midnight ceremonies at Jerusalem's burial site 16 years earlier, he added that “young Werther's grave is still being visited” (1792, 219). That was still the case in 1839, when the Rheinische Provinzialblätter (Rhineland Provincial Journal) reported on continuing pilgrimages to “Werther's grave in Wetzlar” (quoted in Bickelmann 1937, 27). Equally interesting to contemporary readers was that Charlotte Buff and Johann Georg Christian Kestner had inspired, indeed were, Lotte and Albert. The thirst for information about such reallife models seemed unquenchable, and the very first monograph about Werther, published in 1775, provided a number of keys to their identity. Its author, Karl Wilhelm Freiherr von Breidenbach zu Breidenstein, had lived in Wetzlar from 1772 until 1776 and was thus able to identify Werther's “Wahlheim” as the nearby village of Garbenheim, to locate the well in Wetzlar that is described in the letter of May 12, and, most important, to name the models for the novel's characters, albeit in still slightly encoded form. The “Magistrate S …,” says Breidenbach, is actually “Magistrate B‥f” (Heinrich Adam Buff), while “Lotte” is his daughter Charlotte — “schlank, blond, mit blauen Augen, naiv, und sonst liebenswürdig” (6: slim, blonde, with blue eyes, naive, and charming besides).