Ausgabe letzter Hand

Ausgabe letzter Hand, general term for a definitive edition of collected works supervised by the author but chiefly employed with reference to Goethe, whose Goethes Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe letzter Hand appeared in 40 volumes between 1827 and 1830. The publisher was Cotta of Stuttgart. A supplementary series of 20 volumes (41-60) followed in the years 1832-42 with the title Goethes Nachgelassene Werke. Its editors were J. P. Eckermann and F. W. Riemer. Important works which were published for the first time in the Ausgabe letzter Hand include the poems Trilogie der Leidenschaft (1827), the complete Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1829), the Zweiter römischer Aufenthalt (1829), the Tag- und Jahreshefte (1830), and (in the supplementary series) Faust II (1832), the first versions of Götz von Berlichingen (1833) and of Iphigenie auf Tauris (1842), the fourth part of Dichtung und Wahrheit (1843), and the Paralipomena zu Faust (1842). The edition exists in two formats, 12° and 8°; the contents of both forms are identical.