Theodor-Fontane-Archiv
Cultural Place of Remembrance
The Theodor Fontane Archive (established 1935) is a literary archive, a research institute and a cultural organization dedicated to Theodor Fontane, his time and his contemporaries. Today, it is a scientific institute of the University of Potsdam.
In 2001, the Federal Government included the Theodor Fontane Archive to its »Blaubuch« (Blue Book) as a cultural place of remembrance of particular national significance. Since 2007, it has been situated in the Villa Quandt next to Potsdam’s Pfingstberg.
Digital Services
The Theodor Fontane Archive gradually makes its collections of objects and metadata digitally available.
Digital Collection of Manuscripts Fontane Blätter Online Fontane Correspondence Database OPAC
Fontane Bibliography Online Digital Fontane Chronicle Fontane's Reference Library
News
Information from the Archive
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Research focus »Digital Literary Archive«
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Image: TFAVirtual Exhibition: Tracing Fontane’s Legacy
For more than eighty years, the Theodor Fontane Archive has been preserving, indexing, researching and presenting the most extensive authentic »traces« of Theodor Fontane. Since the end of 2019, these »traces« - thousands of manuscripts, but also paintings, drawings and photos as well as life documents of all kinds - can be experienced even more vividly by visitors of the archive: The mobile panel exhibition »Tracing Fontane’s Legacy« allows you to explore the Theodor Fontane Archive - its history, holdings and activities - and a wide variety of life documents of Theodor Fontane.
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Image: Gerhard Westrich
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Image: TFA/UCLabMissing holdings and returns after 1945
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Numerous collection items of the Theodor Fontane Archive were lost in the last months of the war in ways that remain unexplained to this day. A complete overview of the missing holdings can be found here.
Image: TFAReturns after 1945
The history of the Theodor Fontane Archive since 1945 has also been marked by returns and reacquisitions from private and public collections. A tabular overview of the returnees since 1945 can be found here.
Fontane quote
The most human thing we have is language, and we have it in order to speak... .