Zu Fontanes Schach von Wuthenow: Deutung einer Schach-Figur (German Edition)

The passages about Heinrich's room lists the objects in ways in which they seem merely to display superfluous data, yet this flow of information has the rhetorical effect to establish an impression of authenticity. Drawing on Barthes' essay "The Reality Effect", we can understand Fontane's objects as representations of what the French theoretician calls insignificant detail.

Fontane, Theodor 1819-1898

Comparable to the barometer in Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary , Barthes' example, the objects in Fontane's junk room carry no significance for the story. Yet their insignificance is precisely the condition of possibility for suggesting effects of authenticity. On the other hand, and that is similar to the depiction of the epitaph, these effects of authenticity remain singular entities, that are not integrated the form of a grand narrative about the Prussian era and its historical heroes.

The narrator only describes the interior objects and its effects of historical authenticity, but these effects fails conveying a story around about the history of Rheinsberg and its royal inhabitants. The narrator is not only left wondering about the past, he also has to make the concession that the objects do not work as relying historical sources. Many of the exponents are in a condition, in which one almost cannot recognize them anymore.

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The worn out velvet plate of Heinrich writing desk lost its color and a ceiling fresco displaying the allegory! The narrator recapitulates his impressions with the following words: There are, however, attempts to rehabilitate Heinrich as a historical figure and there is a passage that tries to set the disparate elements of the junk room into a new light: The passage prognoses that after long periods of misunderstanding and misperception a potential rewriting of Prince Heinrich's legacy could be in order.

However, the last word of the passage impedes this endeavor. Although the narrator speculates about Heinrich's deliverance, its realization remains quite doubtful, since the passage ends by stating that there only will be left the possibility of comparison. Comparing historical data represents one of the main practices in the fields of positivistic historicism 6 that was en vogue in the academies during the last third of the nineteenth century in Germany; a practice that often resulted into historical relativism.

When understanding of the past can merely achieve comparison, then historical interpretation is not only closely related to the analytical practices of natural science, but it is also no longer constructed within a philosophical-semantic framework.

Theodor Fontane's representation of monuments in the Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg

According to the historian Reinhart Koselleck, around the last third of the eighteenth century, history gained the power of becoming a "collective singular," it obtained a symbolic authority to create meaning and to make sense of the past. The chance of being compared that might await Heinrich's figure in the future would only throw him into a new "junk room", where his memory would drown again in the abundance of data. This vision of a drowning or even suffocating within the abundance of historical data is also crucial for Fontane's representation about the obelisk.

Together with the Prince Heinrich's pyramid style gravestone, the narrator titles the obelisk as one of the main attractions in the Rheinsberg park.

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Already the foreword to the Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg mentions the Egyptian-style monument and connects it with a specific mode of historical representation: The expression "Lapidarstil" is notable. From the Latin "lapis" "stone" the word "lapidar" refers to Ancient Roman gravestone engravings.

On the one hand, it simply refers to the idea that the past, in this case the events of the Seven Years War , is represented through the medium "stone," namely as a sculpture with inscriptions on it. On the other hand, though, "lapidar" also refers to a type of surprising, but sharp and concise form of speech. In particular this meaning of "lapidar" is of interest when one tries to capture the significance of Fontane's obelisk.

The text highlights that Prince Heinrich committed the obelisk to his brother August Wilhelm, who fell into disfavor with King Frederick II for political and personal reasons. Moreover, by erecting the obelisk one should be reminded of the 24 Prussian military generals that served in the Seven Years war.

According to Fontane's text, Prince Heinrich was convinced that these men did not receive enough honoration by the king and that they were injustly forgotten in the public memory: The obelisk, thus, should reinstall their presence in nineteenth-century memorial culture and contribute their well-deserved respect and honor that they have been missed during Frederick II's era. Fontane's text, however, goes against the grain of this official undertaking and performs a different mode of remembering for the reader than its narrator prescribes.

The obelisk does not incite a whole new narrative about the legacy of August and the military men.

The reason for this lies in Fontane's rather unconventional modes of representing the monument within the literary text. And these lists go on and on for more than 7 book pages mentioning all 28 generals. These copies of the inscriptions interrupt the flow of the narrative about the narrator's tour and its plot elements come to a complete halt. Similar to the interior rooms in the castle, the description of the obelisk gains also an excessive quality and the text again creates lists, catalogue, and name registers.

Although there are short narrative snippets about the deeds of the generals, these paragraphs do not connect with each other. There is no story, no plot, no thread; only names, locations, and data remain as singular unconnected elements.

The text acts like a type of copy machine precisely registering the shape and engravings of the obelisk performing a mimesis to the stone. Fontane's writing thus suggests as well the effect of petrifaction and the reader seems to be locked out from any interaction or understanding of the text. Reading this petrifaction process from a culture historical perspective one could conclude that Fontane's obelisk-scriptures epitomize the emptiness of memory culture of his era.

Obelisks were definite constituencies of the monument boom of nineteenth-century Germany and they often were erected as markers of national history. Thus, Fontane's "Lapidarstil" gains a new dimension, by which the medium of the stone no longer forces the succinct style of utterance, but rather suggests that the object of investigation escapes textual representation. The obelisk shaped column not only echoes a trend in German memory culture during the nineteenth century, it also refers to a different medial form to communicate: Not only the obelisk, but also all the other discussed monuments in the Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg embody seismographs registering the multimediality of historical memory culture in Germany during the last third of the nineteenth century.

This memory culture was primarily visual and it was constituted by the monuments, museums, and visual spectacles such as world exhibitions, historical panorama, and historical festivals. Fontane's monuments precisely register this multi-medial memory boom and reflect by means of paradoxical modes of representation the heterogeneity of the German visual memory culture during this time. They do not shape, for example, an exclusive "nationalist" approach, in which the monuments would support the official political agendas of Prussia's memorial culture, nor do they fixate another history philosophical model to interpret the past.

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The passages about the epitaph, the interior of the Rheinsberg castle as well as the obelisk de-center the concept of a "collective singular". Eschatological, allegorical, dynastic, allegorical, and arabesque perspectives are cited and arranged into shifting constellations. The Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg , thus, pay tribute to their title; they describe indeed "wanderings" through the past without arche or telos. Richard Howard, Oxford, UK: The Modern Language Review Studien zur Wirkungsgeschichte des deutschen historischen Romans Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg.

Briefe an Mathilde von Rohr, ed.

Brief an Theodor Storm vom Die Geschichtskultur des Jahrhunderts in der historistischen Historie und bei Theodor Fontane. Geschichte und Geschichten aus Mark Brandenburg Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland. Rethinking the French Past: Columbia University Press, Write a product review.

Get to Know Us. Delivery and Returns see our delivery rates and policies thinking of returning an item? See our Returns Policy. Visit our Help Pages. Audible Download Audio Books. Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands. Amazon Prime Music Stream millions of songs, ad-free. Delusions, confusions ; and, the Poggenpuhl family by Theodor Fontane Book editions published between and in 6 languages and held by 2, WorldCat member libraries worldwide "In s Berlin, an aristocratic officer in a glamorous cavalry regiment and a seamstress supporting herself and her invalid foster-mother with piecework defy convention by falling seriously in love.

Beyond recall Unwiederbringlich by Theodor Fontane Book editions published between and in 3 languages and held by 1, WorldCat member libraries worldwide Opposites attract, and Helmut Holk and Christine Arne, the appealing married couple at the center of this engrossing book by one of Germany's greatest novelists, could not be less alike.

Christine is a serious soul from a devout background. She is brooding and beautiful and devoted to her husband and their two children. Helmut is lighthearted and pleasure-loving and largely content to defer to his wife's deeper feelings and better wisdom. They live in a beautiful large house overlooking the sea, which they built themselves, and have been happily married for twenty-three years'only of late a certain tension has crept into their dealings with each other.

Little jokes, casual endearments, long-meditated plans: How a couple can slowly drift apart, until one day they find themselves in a situation which is nothing they ever wished for but from which they cannot go back, is at the heart of this timeless story of everyday life. Theodor Fontane's great gift is to tell the story effectively in his characters' own words, listening to how they talk and fail to talk to each other, watching them turn away from their own true feelings as much as from each other. Irretrievable is a nuanced, affectionate, enormously sophisticated, and profoundly humane reckoning with the blindness of love.

Jenny Treibel by Theodor Fontane Book editions published between and in 7 languages and held by 1, WorldCat member libraries worldwide Theodor Fontane wurde am Der Vater war Apotheker.