In 1847 Fontane passed the apothecary's examination by a "hair's breadth" and soon found employment in Berlin. In the March Revolution (1848) he played a comical rôle, but was subsequently elected a delegate to the first convention to choose a representative. For a year and a quarter he taught two deaconesses pharmacy at an institution called "Bethany." When that employment came to an end he decided that the hoped-for time had finally arrived to give up the dispensing of medicines and earn his living by his pen. Some of his new ballads were accepted by the Morgenblatt, and a volume of verses, dedicated to his fiancée, found a publisher. When news arrived of the victory of Denmark over Schleswig-Holstein at Idstedt (1850) he set out for Kiel to enlist in the army. In Altona he received a letter offering him a position in the press department of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. He accepted immediately and at the same time wrote to Emilie Kummer, to whom he had been engaged for five years, proposing that they should be married in October. She hastened to secure an apartment in Berlin and furnish it, and the wedding was celebrated on the sixteenth of October. Fontane thought he had entered the harbor of success, but he lost his ministerial position in six weeks and was again at sea. He had, however, a companion ready to share his trials and triumphs, and their union proved to be very happy.

In the summer of 1852 he was sent by the Prussian Ministry to London to study English conditions and write reports for the government journals, Preussische Zeitung and Die Zeit. In 1855 he was again sent to England, and this time his journalistic engagement lasted for four years. Accounts of his experiences are contained in A Summer in London (1854) and Beyond the Tweed (1860). From 1860 to 1870 he was on the staff of the Kreuzzeitung and during this time served as a war correspondent in the campaigns of 1864, 1866, and 1870-71. While accompanying the army in France he was seized with a desire to visit the home of Joan of Arc at Domrémy, and was captured, taken for a spy, and imprisoned for a time on the island of Oléron in the Atlantic Ocean. An interesting account of his experiences is given in Prisoner of War (1871). During his years in England he had taken advantage of the opportunity to visit Scotland and familiarize himself with its picturesque beauties and its wealth of historical and literary associations. In the midst of these travels the thought had occurred to him that his own Mark of Brandenburg had its beauties, too, and its wealth of associations. On returning to Berlin he began his long series of journeyings through his native province, making a thorough study of both country and people, particularly the Junkers, for which his trained powers of observation, combined with warm patriotism and true love of historical research, eminently fitted him. His published records of these travels, Rambles through the Mark of Brandenburg (1862-81) and Five Castles (1889), won for him the title of the interpreter of the Mark. His right to this distinction was further established by the novels in which he later employed the fruits of these studies.

Fontane is equally celebrated as an interpreter of Berlin, where he lived for over fifty years, being the one prominent German writer to identify himself with a great city. His two autobiographical works, From Twenty to Thirty and C.F. Scherenberg, tell of his early experiences in the Prussian capital. From 1870 to 1889 he was dramatic critic for the Vossische Zeitung, for which he reviewed the performances at the Royal Theatre. In one of his last criticisms he hailed Hauptmann as a dramatist of promise. In 1876 he was elected secretary of the Berlin Academy of Arts, but served only a brief time. In 1891 the Emperor made him a present of three thousand marks for his services to German literature. In 1894 the University of Berlin bestowed upon him the honorary title of doctor of philosophy. He died on the twentieth day of September, 1898.

Fontane's lyric poetry in the narrower sense is not of a high order; in fact almost none of his writings show the true lyric quality. There is also a striking lack of the dramatic element in his works, and he seems to have felt this limitation of his genius, for he studiously avoided the portrayal of scenes that might prove intensely dramatic. As a writer of ballads he excelled and ranks among the foremost of Germany. The British subjects he treated were impressed upon him during his travels in England and his study of English history. His German themes were taken largely from Prussian history, particularly the period of Frederick the Great. His permanent place in the history of German literature is due, however, not so much to his verse as to his prose writings. He is best known as a novelist, and in the field of the modern novel he is one of the most conspicuous figures.

German novels of the older school were usually too long for a single volume. Fontane's first important work of fiction, Before the Storm, filled four volumes; but he had so much trouble in finding a publisher for it that he began to write one-volume novels, introducing a practice which has since become the common tradition. He employed in them a typical feature of the technique of the ballad, which leaps from one situation to another, leaving gaps to be filled by the fancy of the reader. He says himself, in Before the Storm: "I have always observed that the leaping action of the ballad is one of the chief characteristics and beauties of this branch of poetry. All that is necessary is that fancy be given the right kind of a stimulus. When that end is attained, one may boldly assert, the less told the better."

At the beginning of Fontane's career the Berlin novelists were disciples of Scott, but the only one to survive was Alexis, who adapted Scott's method to the Mark of Brandenburg. Fontane imitated him in Before the Storm (1878), which deals with conditions in the Mark before the wars of liberation. Schach von Wuthenow (1883), a sort of prelude to Before the Storm, was far superior as a novel and helped to establish Fontane's supremacy among his contemporaries, for he had become the leader of the younger generation after the publication of two stories of crimes, Grete Minde (1880) and Ellernklipp (1881), and the creation of the modern Berlin novel, in L'Adultera (1882). L'Adultera unfolds the history of a marriage of reason between a young wife and a considerably older husband, a situation which Fontane later treated, with important variations and ever increasing skill, in Count Petöfi (1884), Cécile (1887), and Effi Briest (1895). With his inexhaustible fund of observation to draw upon he could make the action of his novels a minor consideration and concentrate his rare psychological powers upon realistic conversations in which characters reveal themselves and incidentally acquaint us intimately with others. We see and hear what the world ordinarily sees and hears. A past master in the art of suggestion, which he acquired in his ballad period, Fontane omits many scenes that others would elaborate with minute detail, such as love scenes and passionate crises, and contents himself with bringing vividly before us his true-to-life figures in their historical and social environments. As a conservative Prussian he believed in the supremacy of the law and the punishment of transgression, and his works reflect this belief.

Trials and Tribulations (1887) and Stine (1890) were the first German novels absolutely to avoid the introduction of exciting scenes merely for effect. These histories of mismated couples from different social strata are recounted with hearty simplicity, deep understanding of life, and frank recognition of human weakness, but without condemnation, tears, or pointing a moral. They made Fontane famous. Frau Jenny Treibel (1892), an exquisitely humorous picture of the Berlin bourgeoisie, and Effi Briest "the most profound miracle of Fontane's youthful art," added considerably to the fame of the gray-haired "modern," while The Poggenpuhls (1896) and Stechlin (1898) won him further laurels at a time when most writers would long ago have been resting on those they had already achieved. If a line were drawn to represent graphically his productivity from his sixtieth year on, it would take the form of a gradually rising curve.

His career as a novelist began so late in life that when he once discovered his particular field he cultivated it with persistent diligence and would not allow himself to be drawn away by enthusiasts into other fields. Strength of character was not, however, a new phenomenon in his life, for as long ago as the days when he was an active member of the "Tunnel" he had come in close contact with the Kugler coterie in Berlin, where the so-called Munich school originated, and yet he did not follow his friends in that eclectic movement. So when the naturalistic school of writers began to win enthusiastic support, even though he found himself in the main in sympathy with their announced creed, he did not join them in practice. He felt that what the literature of the Fatherland needed was "originality," and he sought to attain it in his own way, apart from storm and stress. As his mind matured through accumulated knowledge of the world, and his heart mellowed through years of experience and observation, he rose to a point of view above sentiment and prejudice, where the fogs of passion melt away and the light of kindly wisdom shines.

[Illustration: FONTANE MONUMENT AT NEU RUPPIN.]

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