2019 is Fontane-year. The great writer was 200 years ago, on 30. December 1819, born in Neuruppin. To kick off a conversation with Regina Dieterle, who has just submitted a detailed biography.
Deutsche Welle: We are standing in front of a Fontane-anniversary year. 200 years ago he was born. There are many events are announced, biographies, new editions of his books. What a jubilee year?
Regina Dieterle: It is very nice that now, just focus on Theodor Fontane. He is such a great author. You don’t need, perhaps, here and there, a few pointers on what to read really from it, so it just goes into an Event culture.
You have written a very detailed biography. Fontane is not Unknown, his books are quite still popular today. Are there any new sources or to write such a book to turn to in today’s way of speaking to the reader?
Yes for sure, it is a question of a biography always speaks to current readers. A biography always has a duration. Later, we will formulate the different. But you can find really quite New. The research is very much influenced by the division of Germany. We have been researching since the fall of the wall in whole new ways. Some archives are only since the turn of accessible. Since Germany is reunited, it’s a lot easier to talk to each other and also to the sources. I have also found many private letters.
Regina Dieterle
…and then you have to go, in fact, on the traces of Theodor Fontane.
The anniversary naturally opens the way to the landscape described by Fontane, always the Mark of Brandenburg. This has to be seen to understand him as a writer. I have operated more or less in the last 20 years quite intensively, to drive in this landscape, to experience it for yourself – and not only in the Mark of Brandenburg, but to the whole of Europe.
Why should you read Fontane today, for example, his travel literature?
We talk about his book “Beyond the Tweed” on his trip to Scotland. This was a journalistic journey, he thought, I bar me this trip, I also write constantly, and travel articles to write. If you take this book today, and on the same trip goes – it is a real Baedeker-travel – then you can see what has seen Fontane. It opens the eyes. This is just very enriching.
You can also travel through the Mark Brandenburg. Reading the “walks” not from A to Z, but right on the spot. What Fontane, this is incredible: in front of the eye. You can see the people really, as you have lived here. Better you can’t make it, it is so vivid and has recognized no dust.
Theodor Fontane (1819 – 1898)
His travel books to literary qualities. In his great novels such as “Effi Briest” and “der Stechlin” boasts the description of people and landscapes. What distinguishes the novel-writer Theodor Fontane?
We experience the landscape, the people in this landscape. There really are European novels. He writes a German novel that can compare with the novels of Tolstoy, Balzac, Dickens, Thackeray. It is these kind of novels, which we read today are, without much history or much of the landscape of knowledge. They live for themselves. They lead us, of course, in a fictional landscape.
But they are living conflicts: Who to marry? Who is unhappy? What happens if you committed a so-called adultery? What is the reaction of the environment and the society? Can I have as a woman, a child without a man? Fontane treats these questions really up to date, as we will provide you us today.
He writes also against clichés: His characters are not all one-sided, or only on a trait is calibrated. This is a great art of psychology, which he operates. Fontane signed the also?
He is a great psychologist and he is that it lets the people speak. This is his unique ability. He says of himself: I can do really better than any other, namely, Chatting. But to Chat you have to understand correctly. It has great dialogues, the in everyday language, therefore, are so very accessible. In the way we speak, we are revealing to us.
Famous Effi-Briest-film adaptation by Rainer Werner Fassbinder with Hanna Schygulla
When we speak, we show something of ourselves, and that’s not just Good or Evil or Black or White. He understands, through dialogue, to show incredibly well. For example, Effi Briest, in dialogue with the figure of the pharmacist or in the dialogue with the mother, in dialogue with the father or the husband. We always talk a little different. The human portrait is created!
Is chat a good keyword. If you have started your biography with a Chapter “The double perspective”. Fontane’s father was regarded as a great conversationalist. This double perspective is applied to life and work. You have both brought in their book. How is Fontane’s Writing a autobiographical Writing?
If you know Fontane good, if you know his family circumstances and his life-world, well, then, you can see that a significant writing impulse comes from his own life. At its core, it is safe to autobiographical Writing. There he touches us the most.
The old Fontane in his work room, shown on a historical wood engraving
The double perspective, I had to choose because he came to the great work that we see today, of course, as a masterpiece, really late. The novels he writes only from 60 years ago!
And this is really a Problem for a biographer: How can I someone is interesting the reader coming so late to his Actual make for the reader? I’ve noticed that in all the work, not only in the novels, the ballads, the hikes, very much of what he has experienced – and so I have actually, from the beginning of the work.
As a “revolutionary Reactionary” described by a critic (Volker Weidermann in the “mirror”) Fontane now. You can classify Fontane as a political writer?
Yes, that’s right. You have to see him but also in his development: His family was loyal to the king and conservative. He, the only one in the family, has solved it really. In the Vormärz, he writes so wonderfully revolutionary poems, naughty Berlin poems. Since it is quite revolutionary. But then, as the Revolution of 1848 fails, it moves more and more to the right.
In the reactionary period, he earned his bread with the conservative government, not simply of the bread will. This has been confirmed with Research. He has sold out to the government press, as he says himself, he also takes positions in the government and later, the conservative “cross newspaper”. But he didn’t. From the old Fontane, we have the wonderful sentence, “he’ll get time on his democratic citizenship in the World”.
Volker Weidermann from the “mirror” writes, he is like a bullet: He can twist and turn, and he never stays in his fixed position, he can go also. In the sense he is already a phenomenon. For a long time, he also want to participate really political, but later on he is more and more the observer and the observed also with a lot of self-irony, as you can switch positions.
The interview was conducted by Jochen Kürten.
Regina Dieterle: Theodor Fontane, biography, Hanser Verlag, 832 pages, ISBN 978-3-446-26035-1.