Theodor Fontane

Theodor Fontane (1819 – 1898) was a popular 19th-century German-language novelist whose works are still widely read in German but are not as commonly found in English translation. Most of Fontane's life was spent in cosmopolitan Berlin, the thriving capital of Bismarck's newly-unified Germany. After a successful career in journalism and travel writing, beginning in his late fifties, Fontane produced a novel every two or three years until the end of his life. Several of these later works are considered masterpieces.

Fontane is known as a writer of realism, not only because he was conscientious about the factual accuracy of details in fictional scenes, but also because he depicted his characters in terms of what they said or did and refrained from overtly imputing motives to them. The world of these novels in one in which everyone seems powerless, constrained by convention if nothing else. The novels delved into topics that were more or less taboo for discussion in polite society of Fontane's day, including marital infidelity, class differences, urban vs. rural differences, abandonment of children, and suicide. His characters range from lower-middle class to Prussian nobility.

Fontane's novels are especially challenging to translate, because (for example) they may contain subtle, lyrical linguistic motifs, some of which are as clear in German as the famous musical motifs in Prokofiev's Peter in the Wolf, but which do not render equivalently into in English.

Lastly, these are not action novels. Some have been called novels of manners, and impatient readers may find the plot slow-moving. Character is often developed through a series of seemingly insignificant, everyday events; yet, there are no sentences or details which can be considered superfluous to the story's eventual shape.

English translations of the most reknown novels.

This is still very incomplete, for now.

• Unterm Birnbaum, 1885 - An enduringly popular crime story, where the mystery is not about who did what (we sort of know), but what others think happened and how their opinions can change.
  • Under the Pear Tree translated by Patricia Tiney; Huddersfield : Belgarun, 2009 (print-on-demand)
• Irrungen, Wirrungen, 1888 - About an affair between a wealthy officer and a lower-middle-class Berlin girl.
  • Delusions, Confusions, or was it Delusions, Illusions?
  • On Tangled Paths - translated by Peter James Bowman; Penguin reprint (June 6, 2013), 189 pages.
• Unwiederbrichlich, 1891 - About a troubled marriage in Holstein in 1859-1861, five years before the German/Danish war.
  • Beyond Recall translated by Douglas Parmée; London, Oxford University Press, 1964 (out of print)
  • Irretrievable translated by Douglas Parmée; reprint with title change, New York Review of Books, 2011 (Kindle)
  • No Way Back, translated by Hugh Rorrison and Helen Chambers; Angel Classics, London, 2010 (availability?)
• Frau Jenny Treibel, 1892 - About attempts by a schoolmaster's daughter to marry new wealth.
  • tbd
• Effi Briest, 1894 - About a wronged husband conventionally seeking retribution for a long-past affair.
  • tbd

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