ABSTRACT
For more than 200 years the imitation of fictional suicide models has been known as the 'Werther effect'. In 1774 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, whose hero finally shot himself after a sentimental, hopeless love-affair, and which in Goethe's own words had 'a great, indeed, an immense impact'. The imitation hypothesis was supported at another level in an impressive way: Werther's clothing (blue tailcoat with brass buttons, yellow vest, yellow breeches, brown turndown boots, felt hat, and loose, unpowdered hair), which Goethe had described so vividly, became the gentlemen's fashion of the last quarter of the eighteenth century and was known as the 'Werther dress'.
