Hermann and Dorothea was one of Goethe's most popular works during the 19th Century. The sources of the story are from Vollkommene Emigrations - geschicte von denen aus dem Erzbistum Salzburg Vertriebenen Lutheranern (1734) by G. G. G. Göcking and the anonymous Das liebtätige Geragegen die Saltzburgischen Emigranten (1732) however Goethe has transferred the setting from Salzburg to the Rhineland during the French Revolutionary troubles of his own day.

Ramberg painted eight versions of the subject, en grisaille, in 1871.

There is a study of Dorothea in the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich.