Theodor Fontane, novelist, critic, poet, and travel writer, was one of the most celebrated nineteenth-century German men of letters. He was born into a French Huguenot family in the Prussian town of Neuruppin, where his father owned a small pharmacy. His father’s gambling debts forced the family to move repeatedly, and eventually his temperamentally mismatched parents separated.
Though Fontane showed early interest in history and literature - jotting down stories in his school notebooks - he could not afford to attend university; instead he apprenticed as a pharmacist and eventually settled in Berlin. There he joined the influential literary society Tunnel über der Spree, which included among its members Theodor Storm and Gottfried Keller, and turned to writing. In 1850 Fontane’s first published books, two volumes of ballads, appeared; they would prove to be his most successful books during his lifetime. He spent the next four decades working as a critic, journalist, and war correspondent while producing some fifty works of history, travel narrative, and fiction. His early novels, the first of which was published in 1878, when Fontane was nearly sixty, concerned recent historical events.
It was not until the late 1880s that he turned to his great novels of modern society, remarkable for their psychological insight: Trials and Tribulations (1888), Irretrievable (1891), Frau Jenny Treibel (1892), and Effi Briest (1895). During his last years, Fontane returned to writing poetry, and, while recovering from a severe illness, wrote an autobiographical novel that would prove to be a late commercial success. He is buried in the French section of the Friedhof II cemetery in Berlin.
“Gaben, wer hätte sie nicht? Talente - Spielzeug für Kinder,Erst der Ernst macht den Mann, erst der Fleiß das Genie.”
“Ich liebe dich ja… wie heißt es doch, wenn man einen Zweig abbricht und die Blätter abreißt? Von Herzen, mit Schmerzen, über alle Maßen.”
“Geizhälse sind die Plage ihrer Zeitgenossen, aber das Entzücken ihrer Erben.”
“Bücher haben Ehrgefühl. Wenn man sie verleiht, kommen sie nicht mehr zurück.”
“Ein Optimist ist ein Mensch, der ein Dutzend Austern bestellt, in der Hoffnung, sie mit der Perle, die er darin findet, bezahlen zu können.”
“... von 'ne unglückliche Liebe kann sich einer noch wieder erholen un ganz gut 'rausmausern, aber von's unglückliche Leben nicht.”
“Wenig Bildung macht Einbildung!”