The Writer Theodor Fontane (1819-1898)

To return to the Prussian theme, I recently mentioned the German writer Theodor Fontane about whom it is now time to give more details.

There is evidence here in Britain of increasing interest in German literature beyond academic studies, a sign, perhaps, that despite the Europhobia pervading British media, a generation of Britons is growing up who have got to know Germany on school or university exchanges, that is, on a less rarified plane and often through close personal friendships. Their German may not be up to reading novels in the original German, but translations are more frequently available now. In fact, certain translators have made quite a name for themselves for their excellent renderings of modern German writers.

My own students, after leaving school, have tended to introduce themselves to German fiction by reading the English version alongside the original German. This goes particularly for the recent bestseller Der Vorleser (The Reader) by Bernhard Schlink, which has even received the dubious honour of becoming a set text on an A-Level syllabus only about five years after its publication in 1995. Theodor Fontane, however, is, or was, a nineteenth-century author and thus - sad though that is - not likely to be read except as part of a university course.

Theodor Fontane represents an aspect of Prussia that has never been forgotten, namely religious tolerance. He came from a Huguenot family who fled from persecution in France after 18^th October 1685 when Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes of 1598 under which the Protestants had been allowed to continue the practice of their religion. Only weeks later, on 11^th November 1685, the Elector of Prussia Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg issued the Edict of Potsdam to encourage Huguenot refugees to enter Brandenburg, thus showing a foresight which was to have immense bearing on the history of Europe.

Brandenburg was the nucleus of the future kingdom of Prussia and at the time one of the poorest areas in Germany, having suffered much destruction and loss of inhabitants during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) and the ensuing outbreak of plague. Friedrich Wilhelm had every reason, therefore, to encourage immigration, especially as the Huguenots brought with them a great many useful trades and skills which could help to rebuild the economy of Brandenburg.

The name Huguenots probably derives from the German word Eidgenossen, the Swiss confederates bound together by oath. They were Calvinists like the French Swiss, strict Protestants with a strong belief in hard work and thrift, many of them members of noble families who fought for religious freedom in sixteenth-century France. By the end of the seventeenth century every fifth inhabitant of Berlin, by now the capital of Brandenburg-Prussia, was of French origin.

Fontane was born in 1819 in Neuruppin in Brandenburg and died in 1898 in Berlin. He studied to be a pharmacist like his father but gradually turned towards journalism, travel writing and finally novels, so that he was over seventy by the time most of his novels appeared. They seem to read as if they were a great deal nearer to the present day, or perhaps one should say that they illustrate aspects of life which have remained constant for the last hundred or so years. Fontane describes the role of women in marriage particularly well. One has the feeling that he thinks they get rather a raw deal - too little opportunity to develop their talents while married to men who are more interested in pursuing their own careers.

Effie Briest is his best known novel, about a girl who marries a man much older than herself and develops away from him. It has been translated into English and is available in Penguin. Because of its popularity in Germany it has been made into a film at least five times, the first and possibly most famous in 1939 with the title Der Schritt vom Wege (TheFalse Step) under the direction of Gustav Gründgens with Effie played by Marianne Hoppe, two great names in pre- and post-war German theatre and film history. Among his other novels L'Adultera has a similar theme but this time the heroine is a much more confident person who follows the logic of her relationship. It is a subtle study of marriage and of different types of men. There are similarities with some of Ibsen's characters.

Der Stechlin is a fine portrayal of old age with many a gentle dig at "modern times". The nice thing about Fontane is his kindly sense of humour. One can positively hear him chuckling to himself as he describes the characters in his novels. He points gentle fun at their little human foibles, their superficialities, their pretensions. He never lectures. Pomposity in men he detests and never misses an opportunity to bring things down to earth, but the silly vanities of the women evidently afford him much amusement, a prime example of which is the novel about new rich Berlin, Frau Jenny Treibel.

Fontane spent some time in England between 1852 and 1859 writing articles and theatre revues. He loved London, disliked the food and was impressed by the hugeness of everything - "The often mentioned circumstance that London has more night-watchmen than the Kingdom of Saxony has soldiers gives one an idea of the dimensions of this gigantic city."

My own favourites among his writings are the autobiographical Meine Kinderjahre and the Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg. In the spring of 1892 at the age of 73 Fontane became very ill with influenza. Following a suggestion by his family doctor, he began to write his memoirs, starting with the first twelve years of his life. The result was that he "wrote himself back to health" as he noted in his diary. Meine Kinderjahre was a huge success at the time and has remained so. It is the most delightful portrait of childhood, most of it spent in the little North German town of Swinemünde (now Swinouscie in Poland), full of detail in its descriptions of local people, of the big old family house, of the one and only school in the town, and of the many different, highly adventurous games played with his friends. Since his father was the local pharmacist, young Fontane had easy access to the ingredients required for fireworks and gunpowder. In retrospect he decided that his guardian angel must have been a particularly active one. There were many occasions, evidently, when only such a supernatural being could have warded off disastrous consequences after, for instance, the attempt to bombard the town using a large model canon transported out to sea in a rowing-boat.

In the Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg Fontane narrates an exploration of the country that surrounds Berlin, at the end of the nineteenth century a relatively unknown area lacking the sort of sensational landscape that was already attracting tourists to Bavaria or the Rhine Valley. Fontane potters entertainingly through Brandenburg, imparting a mass of fascinating detail about the villages, churches, estates and their noble owners, without once sounding like a travel guide, and regaling his readers with interesting and sometimes hilarious anecdotes. He created, in fact, a four-volume literary and historical monument to the lands along the Elbe, Havel, Oder, Spree rivers, the heartlands of the Prussian kingdom. And yet it is not a book on architecture like Pevsner's work on Britain, nor is it merely an entertaining travelogue. Whatever he wrote about, Fontane was primarily interested in the human element. He describes the people in all his books with enormous affection and particularly the people of Brandenburg. While walking through the stately homes and parks he brings their one-time owners to life. For example, Field Marshal von dem Knesebeck. We meet him after a detailed tour of the house. Von dem Knesebeck is writing his memoirs and remembering the battles he fought against Napoleon. "One year before his death," writes Fontane, " he was made a Field Marshal. Three years earlier was born his first grandson, for whose christening the king had promised to come to Karwe. He did not come, but instead a letter of apology arrived with the king's signature ending in a curlicue surrounding the drawing of a baby. Standing in front of this baby, which, of course, was intended to represent the Knesebeck grandson, was the king himself (a cleverly executed likeness by the king's own hand) in the act of making a bow to the infant. Beneath this were the words: Vivat et crescat gens Knesebeckiana in aeternam.

Or the humorous portrait of Johann Gottfried Schadow, the sculptor and Director of the Berlin Academy of Arts, who created, among other things, the Quadriga statue on the Brandenburg Gate and the exquisite sculpture of the Prussian Princess Luise and her sister Friederike. Despite creating some of the most delicate and sensitive portraits in sculpture, Schadow was known for his plain-speaking in strong Brandenburg dialect as he walked round looking at his students' efforts. According to Fontane he never forgot that he had learnt to draw from watching his father, a tailor, make chalk marks on the material he was about to cut out, then joining the marks with lines to show the outline of the front or back of a garment. The six-year-old Gottfried Schadow used to sit by the great stove in his father's workshop likewise drawing dots and lines on a slate to create not a garment but an unmistakeable picture of his father's face in every detail, only to wipe it away hastily before hurrying to fetch a tankard of beer at his father's command. The same man, when at the height of his success, often used his influence to help aspiring artists. He would always emphasise the craft behind the art and right of an artist to receive fair reward for his skill - "Der Arbeiter ist seines Lohnes wert"("The workman is worth his pay"). Reading Die Wanderungen is like walking through the looking-glass into the past and coming face to face with an endless stream of fascinating characters, all real and part of history.

One of Fontane's delightful anecdotes is the story of Frederick the Great (King of Prussia 1740-1786) recounting with amusement his conversation as Crown Prince with an old man who had been at the Battle of Fehrbellin (1675) in which the army of the Great Elector of Brandenburg beat the Swedish army. The King asked how the battle came about and repeated the old man's words in Plattdeutsch (Low German dialect) which the King spoke as fluently as he spoke Hochdeutsch and, incidentally, French. "Als unse Chorförst is jung west, het he in Utrecht studeert, und doa is de König von Schweden as Prinz ok west. Doa hebben nu de beede Herrn sich vertörnt und hebben sich bi de Hoar' kricht. Un dat is nu de Pike davon!" (Roughly translated: When our Prince elector was young he (he) studied in Utrecht, and there was also (ok) the King of Sweden. The two gentleman got angry with each other and started a fight - "got each other by the hair". And that is the cause of it). Fontane is making the point that Plattdeutsch (Low German) was, and still is, used to create a feeling of kindly familiarity, of homeliness. Still today, when Germans come home to their own region, town or village, they often relapse into the local dialect. Its use confirms their sense of belonging to the local community. It indicates an affection for one's Heimat (home region). A particularly endearing example of this use of dialect appears in Fontane's ballad about the old Herr von Ribbeck and his pear tree. This kindly nobleman had adopted the habit of sharing the harvest from his pear tree with the children on the estate, whom he always addressed in Plattdeutsch (much of which is very similar to English). When he died he was much missed by the children who were no longer allowed to enter the grounds nor receive pears, for his son was tight-fisted and mean. But the children had underestimated the old Herr von Ribbeck, who had insisted he be buried with a pear in his coffin. Three years after his death there was a pear-tree growing on his grave and every autumn, whenever a child passed the churchyard,a voice from the tree whispered "Kumm man röwer, ick gew di 'ne Birn." (Come over here, I'll give you a pear.) http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/fontane/gedichte/ribbeck.htm

Links:

http://gutenberg.aol.de/autoren/fontane.htm

http://www.fontaneseite.de

http://www.theodorfontane.de