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(a) German Editions:
1916 Vergänglichkeit In Das Land Goethes 1914-1916. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt. Pp. 37-8.
1926 Vergänglichkeit Almanach 1927, 39-42.
1928 Vergänglichkeit G.S., 11 291-4.
1946 Vergänglichkeit G.W., 10, 358-361.
(b) English Translation:
‘On Transience’ 1942 Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 23 (2), 84-5. (Tr. James Strachey.)
1950 C.P., 5, 79-82. (Same translator.)
The present translation is a very slightly altered reprint of the one published in 1950.
This essay was written in November, 1915, at the invitation of the Berliner Goethebund (the Berlin Goethe Society) for a commemorative volume they issued in the following year under the title of Das Land Goethes (Goethe's Country). This elaborately produced volume included a large number of contributions from well-known writers and artists past and present, such as von Bülow, von Brentano, Ricarda Huch, Hauptmann and Liebermann. The German original (apart from the picture it gives of Freud's feelings about the war, which was then in its second year) is excellent evidence of his literary powers. It is of interest to note that the essay includes a statement of the theory of mourning contained in ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ (1917e), which Freud had written some months before, but which was not published until two years later.