From Venice, Goethe Herder reported on the "crystallisation" of his Iphigenia drama, which he reworked on the journey from an already rhythmicised prose into the final blank form. This highly significant literary-historical moment is presented in all necessary detail in the present Critical Student Edition: both versions are critically edited and synoptically assigned to each other so that the comparison can be made without any hurdles and the relationship between the two texts becomes visible in all details.