‘Alles ist wie Opferstätte’: Society and Sacrifice in the Works of Theodor Fontane

Abstract

'The novelist of the Berlin, Prussia and Germany of the Second Reich it really happened'''; 1 an author who 'contents himself with presenting milieux almost as the substance of a story,;2 the chronicler of a 'specific society,;3 a 'master of conversation' who 'brilliantly captures [...] the whole character of social life,.4 Comments of this kind occur throughout the secondary literature on Theodor Fontane. And why not? His style is apparently bland; he may seem to offer little more than amiable and diverting chronicles of a specifically Prussian milieu at the close of the nineteenth century. In this perspective, it might seem that his fictive characters, with all their chit-chat and tea parties and gossipy letters, are little more than a gently humorous and realistic reflection of the mores of that particular society. If we view his fiction from a different angle, however, we see something entirely different: a sombre shadow-play is always being enacted beneath these Prussian urbanities. This is perhaps most clearly suggested by the countless references to death, and particularly to sacrifice. Der Stechlin treats