Background
Fontane was born on December 30, 1819 in Neuruppin, a town 30 miles northwest of Berlin, Germany into a Huguenot family.
(German Edition. Fontane, der vier Jahre in London lebte, ...)
German Edition. Fontane, der vier Jahre in London lebte, bereiste die englische Hauptstadt das erste Mal 1852. Dieser Band umfasst seine Reiseberichte aus diesem Aufenthalt.
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(English and German Edition. Theodor Fontane wrote eightee...)
English and German Edition. Theodor Fontane wrote eighteen novels and novellas that established him as Germanys foremost Realist author of the late 19th century. One of his greatest achievements is his novel Irrungen Wirrungen, completed when he was nearly seventy. Set in Berlin, capital of the new German empire, it begins with the fairytale summer romance of an aristocratic cavalry officer and a working-class seamstress. Financial difficulties and the social divide doom the affair, but what began as a diversion entangles their hearts for years to come. Fontane brilliantly captures the spirit of the era with rich historical and social detail. This new translation--especially designed for students of German, English, and Comparative Literature (but a reading pleasure for anyone)--supplies side-by-side English/German text, introduction, biography, maps, and extensive notes. Now a fresh translation of this classic novel, widely read and studied in Germany, is available for English-speaking readers.
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(Die Handlung rankt sich um das Adelsgeschlecht derer von ...)
Die Handlung rankt sich um das Adelsgeschlecht derer von Stechlin, die am gleichnamigen Stechlinsee im Ruppiner Land ihren Sitz haben. Der Autor selbst sagte ironisch, in dem Roman geschehe nicht viel: Zum Schluss stirbt ein Alter und zwei Junge heiraten sich. Tatsächlich liegt das Gewicht des Romans nicht auf der Handlung, sondern auf den vielfältigen Dialogen, welche die gesellschaftliche Wirklichkeit zur Wende vom 19. Jahrhundert auf das 20. Jahrhundert offenbaren. Charakteristisch ist hierbei, wie bei allen Werken Fontanes, dass er die Schwächen seiner Zeit erkennt und in seiner literarischen Darstellung auch nicht verleugnet, dabei aber dennoch zu einer tiefen Sympathie für das, was den Märkischen Adel ausmachen sollte, geprägt ist. Theodor Fontane (1819-1898) war ein deutscher Schriftsteller und gilt als bedeutendster deutscher Vertreter des Realismus. Er wurde als Sohn des Apothekers Louis Henry Fontane und Emilie Fontane geb. Labry in Neuruppin geboren. Fontane brach die Ausbildung an der Gewerbeschule ab und begann eine Ausbildung zum Apotheker. Später in seinem Leben entschied er sich, den Apothekerberuf völlig aufzugeben und als freier Schriftsteller zu leben. Seine erste Novelle "Geschwisterliebe" veröffentlichte Fontane 1839. In seinen Romanen, die großenteils erst nach seinem 60. Lebensjahr entstanden, charakterisiert er die Figuren, indem er ihre Erscheinung, ihre Umgebung und vor allem ihre Redeweise aus einer kritisch-liebevollen Distanz genau beschreibt.
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(Opposites attract, and Helmut Holk and Christine Arne, th...)
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: they all hit a raw nerve.
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(German Edition.)
German Edition.
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(Nach Einer Altmärkischen Chronik.)
Nach Einer Altmärkischen Chronik.
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(In this classic novel—one of the pillars of German litera...)
In this classic novel—one of the pillars of German literature—Lene, a beautiful, orphaned young seamstress, falls in love with Botho, a handsome, aristocratic cavalry officer. They know they have only a short time together, as society deems their relationship inappropriate and refuses to take their love seriously. But while Botho seems to have a glittering life ahead of him, his love may be his undoing. First published in 1887, this taut, flawless masterpiece caused a scandal with its portrayal of a sexual affair across the classes.
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(German Edition.)
German Edition.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0265630029/?tag=2022091-20
(This collection of literature attempts to compile many of...)
This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.
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(German Edition.)
German Edition.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B076JGGFKK/?tag=2022091-20
(Gregarious and adventurous, Count Helmuth Holk is delight...)
Gregarious and adventurous, Count Helmuth Holk is delighted to be called away from his solemn and pious wife to the distant court of a Danish princess. Swept up in the romance of his new surroundings, he does not realize that everyone there is not what they seem—a fact that causes him to make a decision that has fatal consequences. A tragicomic novel of a failing marriage and modern sexual politics, No Way Back is full of the irony, elegance, and masterly dialogue for which Theodor Fontane is acclaimed.
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(In 1919 Thomas Mann hailed Effi Briest (1895) as one of "...)
In 1919 Thomas Mann hailed Effi Briest (1895) as one of "the six most significant novels ever written." Set in Bismarck's Germany, Fontane's luminous tale of a socially suitable but emotionally disastrous match between the enchanting seventeen-year-old Effi and an austere, workaholic civil servant twice her age, is at once touching and unsettling. Fontane's taut, ironic narrative depicts a world where sexuality and the enjoyment of life are stifled by narrow-mindedness and circumstance. Considered by many to be the pinnacle of the nineteenth-century German novel, Effi Briest is a tale of adultery that ranks with Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina and brilliantly demonstrates the truth of the author's comment and "women's stories are generally far more interesting."
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(This was the first of Fontane's sixteen novels, most of w...)
This was the first of Fontane's sixteen novels, most of which became classics of the realist genre. Set in Berlin, shortly before the Prussians rebelled against Napolean, the novel resembles War and Peace. This World's Classics edition is the first and only available in English translation.
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Fontane was born on December 30, 1819 in Neuruppin, a town 30 miles northwest of Berlin, Germany into a Huguenot family.
The son of an apothecary, he planned to follow in his father's footsteps but found the work uncongenial. Thereafter, he determined to pursue a literary career. Two trips to England, one (1852) to study ballad origins and a longer sojourn (1855 - 1859) as an attaché of the Prussian embassy, were followed by an editorial appointment on a conservative Berlin newspaper, Kreuzzeitung, a post that Fontane held until 1870. The post made possible considerable travel, notably described in the Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg (4 vols. , 1862 - 1882).
As a correspondent during the Franco-Prussian War, he was captured and narrowly escaped execution as a spy. In the postwar period he became, and remained for nearly 20 years, the theater critic of the Vossische Zeitung in Berlin. Late in life Fontane discovered the literary form most congenial to his talents and produced the series of novels that reflect his long-continued, analytical, and objective scrutiny of late-19th-century society.
His novels Vor dem Sturm (1878) and Schach von Wuthenow (1883) are historically oriented; others concentrate on contemporary social problems. Three novels, L'Adultera (1880), Cécile (1886), and Effi Briest (1895), concern adultery. In the latter two works the situation is resolved tragically; in L'Adultera a divorce, followed by the marriage of the lovers, restores the necessary social equilibrium.
Irrungen, Wirrungen (1887) treats the "misalliance" between a member of the nobility and a simple, good-hearted girl of the people whose affair must end, for they make the hard decision that social dictates of "duty" and "order" must prevail. Stine (1890) recapitulates a similar theme with tragic overtones.
Frau Jenny Treibel (1892) gently satirizes bourgeois pretensions, while the late novel Der Stechlin (1897) is a sharply observed study of the Brandenburg nobility.
Fontane died in Berlin on September 28, 1898.
He is considered the first master of modern realistic fiction in Germany. Fontane produced his best work after he became the drama critic for the liberal newspaper Vossische Zeitung and was freed from the earlier conservative restraint. Turning to the novel late in life, he wrote, at the age of 56, Vor dem Sturm (1878; Before the Storm), considered to be a masterpiece in the genre of the historical novel.
In several of his novels Fontane also deals with the problem of women’s role in domestic life; L’Adultera (1882; The Woman Taken in Adultery), Irrungen, Wirrungen (1888; Delusions, Confusions), Frau Jenny Treibel (1893), and Effi Briest (1895) are among his best. Effi Briest, in particular, is known for its superb characterization and the skillful portrayal of the milieu of Fontane’s native Brandenburg.
His other major works are Der Stechlin (1899), which is noted for its charming style, and Schach von Wuthenow (1883; A Man of Honor), in which he portrays the weaknesses of the Prussian upper class.
(This collection of literature attempts to compile many of...)
(Opposites attract, and Helmut Holk and Christine Arne, th...)
(In this classic novel—one of the pillars of German litera...)
(Gregarious and adventurous, Count Helmuth Holk is delight...)
(Die Handlung rankt sich um das Adelsgeschlecht derer von ...)
(In 1919 Thomas Mann hailed Effi Briest (1895) as one of "...)
(This was the first of Fontane's sixteen novels, most of w...)
(Nach Einer Altmärkischen Chronik.)
(English and German Edition. Theodor Fontane wrote eightee...)
(German Edition. Fontane, der vier Jahre in London lebte, ...)
(German Edition.)
(German Edition.)
(German Edition.)
As a member of the French Protestant Church of Berlin, he was buried in the congregation's cemetery on the Liesenstraße.
Fontane is no reformer but a mildly amused, somewhat reserved, and keen-eyed observer to whom "society" represents a manifestation of a principle of order. Though neither divinely nor naturally ordained, society still transcends the power of the individual to alter it; those who make an attempt do so at their peril. What has been called Fontane's "psychological naturalism" links the preceding tradition of poetic realism and the analytical approach so prominent in the 20th-century German novel.
Quotations:
"Marriage is order, " Fontane believed, and without preaching he demonstrates the inevitably unhappy consequence when this "law" is flouted.
He portrayed the Prussian nobility both critically and sympathetically. His aim was, as he said, “the undistorted reflection of the life we lead. ”
His wife, Emilie, was buried beside him four years after his death.
