History of the Archive
Following his death in 1898, Theodor Fontane’s estate, initially in the possession of his family, was stewarded by a testamentary commission. Parts of the estate were transferred to the »Märkisches Museum« at an early stage. After negotiations with the »Preußische Staatsbibliothek« (Prussian State Library) on the purchase of the parts of the estate administered by Friedrich Fontane failed, this family property was auctioned off by the Meyer & Ernst auction house on October 9, 1933.
![[Translate to English:] Testament von Theodor und Emilie Fontane, 7.2.1892 [Abschrift für Paul Schlenter] (TFA Ga 34) (opens enlarged image)](/fileadmin/user_upload/Archiv-Geschichte/2019-02-17_Testament-Fontane-Abschrift__C__TFA.png "(opens enlarged image)")
Image: TFA![[Translate to English:] Katalog der Versteigerung des Nachlasses von Theodor Fontane, 9.10.1933 (opens enlarged image)](/fileadmin/user_upload/Archiv-Geschichte/2019-02-18_Katalog-Versteigerung-1933__C__TFA.png "[Translate to English:] Katalog der Versteigerung des Nachlasses von Theodor Fontane, 9.10.1933 (opens enlarged image)")
Image: TFAIn 1935, the provincial administration of Brandenburg acquired the extensive components that were not sold at auction, together with the collection created by Friedrich Fontane and the part of his publishing archive relating to his father, and founded the Theodor Fontane Archive as a literary archive of the province of Brandenburg.
The Fontane Archive took up its activities immediately after the founding and was able to considerably expand its holdings into the war years. One of the first employees was Charlotte Jolles, a doctoral student of Julius Petersen. In the last year of the war, a considerable loss of the holdings occurred in the throes of evacuation, the whereabouts of which remain uncertain to this day. A list of the missing holdings of the Fontane Archive can be found here.
After 1948 the Fontane Archive was administered as a department of the »Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek Brandenburg« (Brandenburg State and University Library) and from 1969 as a departmentof the »Deutschen Staatsbibliothek Berlin« (German State Library in Berlin) (GDR). In the years after 1989, the threatened dissolution of the Fontane Archive was averted by its reestablishment as an independent institution of the state of Brandenburg. Since 1992, its scholarly work has enabled it to position itself as a research-based literary archive, while at the same time significantly expanding its collections through acquisitions.
The holdings of the Theodor Fontane Archive, which had been missing since the Second World War, were documented by the former head of the archive Manfred Horlitz in a publication in 1999.
In October 2007, the Fontane Archive moved into the Villa Quandt next to Potsdam’s Pfingstberg, which was restored for use by the Fontane Archive with funding from the Hermann Reemtsma Foundation in Hamburg and the European Regional Development Fund. In the same year, it became affiliated with the »Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv« (Brandenburg Main State Archive). Since July 1, 2014, the Fontane Archive has been part of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Potsdam as an academic institution.