Fontane, Theodore

A professional hereditary pharmacist is a descendant of the French Huguenots who moved after the edict of Fontainebleau to Prussia. He began his literary work in the late 1830s with poems. As a correspondent of conservative Prussian newspapers, he lived in Victorian England for a long time, published several books of essays and reports on the homeland of Walter Scott , whom he considered his idol. His imitations of Scottish folk ballads became textbooks. In the years 1862-82. published four volumes of the fictionalized travel essay Brandenburg-Wandering , which brought him widespread popularity.

At the end of his life, he left journalism and devoted himself to writing novels diagnosing the state of Prussian society. The first of the “Prussian novels” was written by Fontane already at a fairly advanced age (56 years).

Per Fontana owns numerous dramas , poems, biographies , historical narratives, critical and journalistic articles, in particular the novels Before the Storm ( Vor dem Sturm ), Greta Minde ( Grete Minde , 1880 ), the novel Sinner ( L'Adultera , 1882 ), the story " Shah von Wuthenow " ( Schach von Wuthenow , 1883 ), "Count Petofi" ( Graf Petöfy , 1884 ), "Cecile" ( Cecile , 1887) , the novel " Effie Briest " ( Effi Briest , 1895 , ballet Violets Dinescu , 1998 ; opera by Helmut Ehring and Iris ter Schiphorst, 2000 ), тех техtehlin ’( Der Stechlin , novel published posthumously in 1899 ).

In 1858, during a trip to Scotland, Fontane was able to see that the inhabitants of this region, so poetically praised by the respected Walter Scott, are no longer living in legends. He found that they were interested in the new, the modern. It was then that Fontane's view of history began to take shape as an inextricable link between the past and the present. An example here is the novel “Shah von Vutenov”, the action of which is attributed to several decades in the past, but the reader at the same time understands that such a deepening in history serves only as the basis for a conversation about the present.

Fontane created his type of novel in the era of grunding . The novel, in his opinion, “should be a picture of the time to which we ourselves belong, at least a reflection of a period of life, at the borders of which we have already stood, or about which our parents told us about”. The most famous is the cycle of his “Berlin novels” (“The Wife of Unfaithfulness”, “Shah von Wooten”, “Cecilia”, “Crossroads”, “Stina”, “Madame Jenny Tribel”), which is principally oriented towards reflecting the problems of our time.

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  Sculptor Max Wiese. Monument to Theodore Fontane, Neuruppin , 1907

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  Sculptor Matthias Hol-Stein. Monument to Theodor Fontane, Neuruppin , 2006

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  Sculptor Ottmar Hurl . Installation dedicated to Theodore Fontana, Neuruppin , 2016

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  Germany postage stamp on the 150th anniversary of T. Fontane, 1970

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  Postage stamp Germany, dedicated. T. Fontane, 1953

• Effie Brist. M .: Goslitizdat, 1960
• Shah von Wooten. Crossroads. Mrs. Jenny Tribel. M .: Fiction, 1971
• Crossroads. Mrs. Jenny Tribel, or the Heart gives the heart news. M .: Terra Book Club, 2003

• Schiller Prize (1891)

• Mann T. Old Man Fontane // He. Collected Works in 10 vols. T. 9. M .: Goslitizdat, 1960, p. 422-450
• Volkov E. M. novel by T. Fontane "Effie Brist." M .: Higher school, 1979
• Theodore Fontane translated by D. Schedrovitsky

• Literary Encyclopedia (inaccessible link from 06/14/2016 [1190 days])