Theodor Fontane und die Technik by Philipp Frank, and: Black Devil and Iron Angel: The Railway in Nineteenth-Century German Realism by Paul A. Youngman

Abstract

MLR, I02.3, 2007 89I published text do not in any way depend on the careful examination of the source material in thepreceding parts of his book. Here it is worth repeating Fontane's own statement, so frequentlyquoted (see p. I I) and yet so frequently disregarded: 'Ich sehe klar ein, daB ich eigentlich erst bei dem 7oer Kriegsbuche und dann bei dem Schreiben meines Romans [Vor dem Sturm] ein Schriftsteller geworden bin d.h. einMann, der seinMetier als eine Kunst betreibt.' The corollary of this is surely thatwe should look for the differences between Der Krieg gegen Frankreich and its predecessors. Perhaps themost obvious is that the Franco-Prussian War did not readily lend itself to arrangement around a single de cisive battle, and its recalcitrantmaterial required amore subtle formof structuring. Comparison with themanuscript material shows in theMont-Valerien chapter, for instance, the late improvement of 'denZirkel' into 'den einschlieBenden Eisenzirkel' (p. I I3), which helps establish a parallel between Sedan and Paris, and so between books I and 2. The second major difference is the absence (at theauthor's insistence) of illustration. Pacholski seems to regret this,but a glance at theunpublished material he supplies makes Fontane's motives abundantly clear.At the editorial stage ofDer deutscheKrieg von i866 the finalcomments are those of the illustrator,usually requir ing the author to reorganize the text so as to accommodate an illustration, or recast a sentence so that itshould begin with a specific initial capital which, independently of the author, Burger had already supplied in elaborately decorated form.More empi rical inhis approach thanUwe Hebekus (Klios Medien (Tiibingen: Niemeyer, 2003), reviewed in MLR, 100 (2005), 558-59), Pacholski nevertheless chooses to emphasize the collaborative and multi-medial quality of thewar-books, whereas the tendency is clearly towards theprimacy of narrative. Pacholski's preference is reflected in thedetailed commentary on Burger's illustra tions, 'Exkurs iiberdas Bildwerk', the titleofwhich implicitly acknowledges a certain independence of the stated purpose of the study.Paradoxically, however, thisconsti tutes the second major contribution to the discussion of thewar-books. Because of thisand the manuscript material, Pacholski's book will have tohave a place alongside Fontane's published texts, which are unlikely ever tobe available in a critical edition. UNIVERSITY OFWARWICK JOHNOSBORNE Theodor Fontane und die Technik. By PHILIPP FRANK. (Epistemata Literaturwis senschaft, 526) Wiurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann. 2005. 265 pp. E36. ISBN 978-3-8260-2965-3. Black Devil and IronAngel: The Railway in Nineteenth-Century German Realism. By PAULA. YOUNGMAN.Washington: Catholic University ofAmerica Press. 2005. xiii+ I73 pp. $49.95. ISBN 978-o-8I32-I4I6-0. In I977 the brilliantly eclectic Wolfgang Schivelbusch published his Geschichte der Eisenbahnreise (Frankfurt a.M.: Hanser). This impressionistic book, outlining the ef fectsof the railwaynetwork on nineteenth-century modes ofperception, set thepoints for a series of studies which looked at the symbolic import of thismost material of technological objects within thecultural history of the industrial age. There have been a number of anthologies (notablyWolfgang Minaty's Die Eisenbahn: Gedichte, Prosa, Bilder (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, I984)) and also a number ofmonographs, inparticular by Johannes Mahr (Eisenbahnen in der deutschenDichtung (Munich: Fink, i982)), Gerhard Rademacher (Technik und industrielleArbeitswelt inder deutschenLyrik des I9. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, I976)), and more recently, Alfred Heinimann (Technische Innovation und literarischeAneignung: Die Eisenbahn inder deutschen und englischenLiteratur des i9. Jahrhunderts (Bern: Francke, i992)), 892 Reviews followed byHarro Segeberg's seminal work Literatur im technischen Zeitalter (Darm stadt:Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997). The two studies under considera tion here seek indifferentways tobuild on theseworks, although inboth cases there is a definite sense of dehaja vu for the reader already familiarwith the earlier books and inparticular with the literary texts that they (re-)examine. Common toboth studies is thework ofTheodor Fontane. While Paul Youngman devotes one chapter of his book on nineteenth-century 'realist' depictions of the train toFontane's Cecile and EffiBriest, Philipp Frank's methodical analysis isentirely de voted to the significance of technology in thewhole of Fontane's output, frompoems such as the early 'Junker Dampf' and the later 'Briuck'am Tay' through the reportage of his English journalism and wanderings through theMark Brandenburg to the 'Hauptwerk' that ishis...