Werther resigns from his court position after a conflict with his ambassador turns professional disagreement into a reprimand, and mounting dissatisfaction makes continued service seem impossible. The decision breaks with a promising official career, but it does not leave him without a destination: a prince invites him to a country house for the spring months. The departure therefore carries two opposing meanings. It is an escape from a role that has become intolerable and a passage toward a temporary freedom whose promise is shadowed by Werther’s return to the places and hopes of childhood.

Conflict at Court

On February 17, Werther fears that he and his ambassador will not remain together much longer. He finds the ambassador’s way of conducting business ridiculous, and says he is often compelled to contradict him and act according to his own judgment. The ambassador, in turn, considers Werther’s interventions badly done and complains about him at court. The resulting reprimand from the minister is gentle, but its gentleness does not cancel its force: Werther experiences it as a formal rebuke for conduct he regards as necessary.

At first, the reprimand brings him close to resigning. A letter from the minister, however, changes the immediate course of events. Werther submits to it because he esteems the high-minded and generous spirit behind it. The minister recognizes his excessive sensibility and strong ideas about duty, example, and perseverance as products of youthful ardor, and seeks not to extinguish that energy but to moderate it. The intervention gives Werther a brief reprieve: he says he is at rest for another week and no longer at variance with himself. His description of contentment and peace as precious but transitory makes clear that the accommodation has postponed the break rather than repaired the underlying discord.

Decision and New Destination

On March 24, Werther writes that he has tendered his resignation to the court and hopes it will be accepted. He has not consulted his friend beforehand, explaining that he already knows the arguments that would be offered to persuade him to stay. His insistence that he is going ends the discussion in advance: the decision is presented not as a proposal for debate but as an act he has already made necessary for himself.

The resignation is also framed as a limit on his capacity to serve others. Werther asks how he could be competent to assist anyone when he is unable to do anything for himself. He understands what the departure may cost in conventional advancement: his mother will be distressed that he has interrupted a career that might have led first to privy councillor and then to minister. The expected direction of progress is explicit, but Werther rejects it, saying that he would otherwise be looking behind him instead of advancing. His choice thus pits personal necessity against a respectable, foreseeable future.

His departure is not initially a leap into an unknown life. A prince who is staying there has heard of Werther’s intention and invites him to his country house for the spring months. Werther expects to be completely his own master there. He and the prince agree on all subjects but one, a qualification that suggests their companionship is not without disagreement, though the letters do not specify the issue. Werther decides to try his fortune by accompanying him, making the invitation a practical alternative to court service rather than a resolution of every conflict behind the resignation.

Acceptance and Departure

By April 19, Werther has received the court’s answer: his request is granted and his resignation accepted. He had delayed replying to his friend until the decision arrived, and withheld his letter because he feared his mother might appeal to the minister to defeat his purpose. The possibility of family intervention shows that the resignation is not merely an internal change of mind; Werther anticipates others trying to preserve the career he has chosen to abandon.

He does not recount the reluctance with which the court accepted his departure or repeat what the minister wrote, saying only that such details would renew his friend’s lamentations. The omission leaves the official response partly outside the account while establishing that the separation was not effortless. Meanwhile, the crown prince sends him twenty-five ducats. Werther is moved to tears by this kindness and decides that he will no longer ask his mother for the money he had recently requested. The gift provides concrete support as he leaves, while also marking a personal gesture of goodwill amid his break with official employment.

On May 5, Werther says he will leave the next day. Because his native place lies only six miles from the high road, he plans to visit it on the way and recall his childhood. He remembers entering through the same gate with his mother after his father’s death, when she left that retreat for the town where his friend lives. The planned return is therefore attached to a specific family departure in the past: leaving court brings him back toward a place associated with an earlier passage out of home.

Return and Significance

The visit, made with the devotion of a pilgrim, turns the proposed farewell journey into a reckoning with changed expectations. Near the great elm tree a quarter of a league from the village, Werther gets out of the carriage and sends it ahead so he can walk alone and experience his recollections fully. The tree had once marked the limit and object of his walks. Its unchanged presence sets off the change in him: as a child, he longed in happy ignorance for an unknown world that he imagined would contain every pleasure he desired; now, returning from that wider world, he carries disappointed hopes and unsuccessful plans.

The resignation consequently does not read as a triumphant advance toward a newly secured future. The prince’s invitation and gift ease the immediate transition, yet Werther’s homecoming measures the distance between imagined fulfillment and actual experience. The movement away from court opens a period of greater independence, but the return to the elm gives that freedom a melancholy frame: the future he once projected onto the wider world has already failed to match the promise he attached to it.