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Object of the Month

What would an archive be without its many collection items, each rich in history and stories? Here, we show you a small selection of our favorite objects from our collections. We started the series in May 2021 with the Fontane bust—further objects will follow at monthly intervals.

September 2025

Image: TFA

Ur-Inventar

Der Gründungsbestand des Fontane-Archivs und sein erstes Verzeichnis

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August 2025

Image: TFA

Briefschwärmerei mit System

Welche Hilfsmittel ermöglichen die Annäherung an Fontanes umfassendes Briefwerk?

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Juli 2025

Image: TFA

Wiederaufbau und Neubeginn

Zur Geschichte des Theodor-Fontane-Archivs nach Kriegsende

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Juni 2025

Image: TFA

»In Sachen Fontane«

Ein Brief von Jutta Neuendorff-Fürstenau an Herrmann Fricke vom September 1952 gibt Einblick in die Provenienzgeschichte des Likedeeler-Manuskripts.

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Mai 2025

Image: Stiftung Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste

Lost Art

Das Theodor-Fontane-Archiv dokumentiert seine beträchtlichen Kriegsverluste auf unterschiedliche Weisen: zum Beispiel in der Lost Art-Datenbank.

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April 2025

Image: Gerhard Hillmer / TFA

Late honor for Luise Röbel

A press photo from 1967 shows Luise Röbel, who saved parts of the Fontane estate from being looted in 1945.

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March 2025

Image: TFA

The Fontane Estate

The literary estate of Theodor Fontane is one of the most extensive of the 19th century. It constitutes the basis for the establishment of the Fontane Archive.

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February 2025

Image: TFA

Anniversaries

In 2025, the Theodor Fontane Archive celebrates its 90th anniversary. The archive can look back on a whole series of jubilees.

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January 2025

Image: Staatsbibliothek Berlin

Emilie Fontane’s ›Youth novella‹

Open Access special print in the current Fontane Blätter: The new edition of Emilie Fontane’s ›Jugendnovelle‹, her fragmentary autobiography.

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December 2024

Image: TFA

Ellora Mother

What is the Ellora? And which role played Emilie Fontane there? Two interesting objects tell us more.

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November 2024

Image: TFA

»Your old eternal Paul Heyse«

A letter from Paul Heyse to Emilie Fontane dated January 17, 1890 has been returned to the archive.

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October 2024

Image: TFA

The household accounts of the Fontane family

The Theodor Fontane Archive published an edition of the Fontane family’s household accounts as the second Digital Supplement to the Fontane Blätter.

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September 2024

Image: TFA

»Copying machine«

Emilie Fontane calls herself a »copying machine«, thereby characterizing her contribution to all of her husband’s writings.

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August 2024

Image: TFA

»Jitter«

A revealing letter provides insight into Emilie Fontane’s role in the Fontane ›writer’s store‹.

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July 2024

Image: TFA

Poet’s wife

Proofreader, editor, or insignificant typist? Emilie Fontane in the spotlight of research

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June 2024

Image: Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek

Reading hall for women

Theodor Fontane’s novel Mathilde Möhring sheds light on his support for the public reading hall movement at the end of the 19th century.

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May 2024

Image: TFA

Reading lady

In 1872, Adolph Menzel dedicated a small gouache to Emilie Fontane, which can currently be seen in the exhibition Emilie200 in the Fontane Archive.

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April 2024

Image: TFA

Emilie Fontane

Emilie Fontane’s life documents, collected here for the first time, bear witness to a complicated search for identity.

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March 2024

Image: TFA

Dragon’s milk

A story of jealousy: A letter dated April 14, 1850 from Emilie Fontane to Wilhelm Wolfsohn reveals details about Theodor Fontane’s relationship with Sophie von Melgunow.

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February 2024

Image: TFA

Internship at the Fontane Archive in 1967

56 years after her internship at the Theodor Fontane Archive, Dr. Maria Peter presents the archive a copy of her diploma thesis Theodor Fontane and Poland.

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January 2024

Image: TFA

Dominik edition

The first complete edition of Fontane’s works is named after the publisher who initiated it, Emil Dominik. The Theodor Fontane Archive was able to acquire a complete unbound copy of the Dominik edition in 48 deliveries from a Berlin collector.

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December 2023

»Schmalhans«

New publication: Under the title Schmalhansküchenmeisterstudien versus Petitionsschriftstellerei, Lothar Weigert and Klaus-Peter Möller explore Fontane’s hitherto little-known activities for the Berlin branch of the German Schiller Foundation.

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November 2023

Image: Leo Baeck Institute

Poetic Fontane

Julius Babs’ 1912 book Lyrische Porträte (Poetic portraits) is dedicated to various personalities from politics, literature, and music, including Fontane. The table of contents reflects a violently interrupted German and Jewish educational canon.

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October 2023

Image: TFA

»October song«

New acquisition at the Fontane Archive: We present Theodor Fontane’s handwritten birthday poem Oktoberlied to Theodor Storm from 1853.

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September 2023

Image: TFA

Heine’s »Romanzero«

The traces of reading in Fontane’s personal copy of Heinrich Heine’s Romanzero shed light on Fontane’s reception of Heine. In the exhibition Poet? Love!—Heine’s famous readership at the Heinrich Heine Institute Düsseldorf, the book is on display from September 16, 2023.

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August 2023

Image: TFA

»Greta Minde« from Stanford

The Fontane Archive receives a previously unknown English translation of Fontane’s Grete Minde, which is not recorded in any library catalog.

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July 2023

Image: TFA / photoeffekte.com

Moving to Sodom

One of the early correspondence editions from 1910 provides an insight into Fontane’s attitude to homosexuality.

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June 2023

Image: TFA

Collection history/stories

Now fully accessible online: the permanent loan of 188 items from the Verein für die Geschichte Berlins (Association for the History of Berlin) with Fontane manuscripts and letters to Fontane from prominent contemporaries.

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May 2023

Image: TFA

Fontane crime novels

It begins with Theodor Fontane’s crime novella Unterm Birnbaum (1885) and experiences so many spin-offs that it becomes a genre in its own right: the Fontane crime novel.

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April 2023

Image: TFA

A keepsake

A portrait photograph with a handwritten dedication by Theodor Fontane to Adele and Hugo Sonnenthal has survived the turmoil of time. Now their descendants have donated it to the Theodor Fontane Archive.

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March 2023

Image: TFA

»Album of unintentional comedy«

A new addition to the Fontane Archive: the immensely popularAlbum unfreiwilliger Komik (Album of unintentional comedy), a collection of misprints, stylistic blunders, and misspellings from the contemporary daily press.

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February 2023

Image: TFA

Hiking books

No other text by Fontane has been dealt with by authors as often as the Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg (Rambles through the Mark Brandenburg): the numerous ›Nachwanderbücher‹ (Books on hiking in the footsteps of Fontane) bear witness to this.

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January 2023

Image: TFA

Radio broadcast

The recording of a GDR radio broadcast on the occasion of Theodor Fontane’s 150th birthday on December 30, 1969 provides an insight into the history of the Theodor Fontane Archive.

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December 2022

Image: de Gruyter

»Fontane’s media«

Just published: the new standard work on Fontane’s media! 36 essays are freely accessible online thanks to funding from the Publication Fund for Open Access Monographs of the Land Brandenburg.

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November 2022

Image: DEFA-Lück

»Under the pear tree«

We show five scene photos by DEFA photographer Dieter Lück from the film adaptation of Fontane’s Unterm Birnbaum (Under the pear tree, 1973). They can be found in the image and media collection of the Theodor Fontane Archive.

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October 2022

Image: TFA

»Jack-of-all-trades«

What sorts of things can you produce from papier-mâché? Relief maps, globes, or even a chandelier for the Berlin Opera? Emilie Fontane’s stepfather Karl Wilhelm Kummer was a true »Tausendkünstler« (Jack-of-all-trades).

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September 2022

Image: Harvard Art Museums

»Doodle?«

Did a letter from Adolph Menzel dated February 7, 1852—and especially its enclosure—so enrage Fontane that he crumpled it up, threw it away, and only smoothed it out again afterwards?

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August 2022

Image: TFA

»Salon-Feuilleton« 1894

A new acquisition in the Fontane Archive: A book that does not exist, a magazine that is not a magazine, a publication that is not a publication—the »Salon-Feuilleton« edited by Josef Ettlinger.

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July 2022

Image: Rainer Ehrt

Historical Rag Collector

The painting Pferdebahn Fontanestraße (Horsecar Fontane Street) by Rainer Ehrt has recently been placed as a permanent loan in the Theodor Fontane Archive. We present the artist and his work here.

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June 2022

Image: TFA

Likedeeler fragment

»I want to write a new novel (it doesn’t matter whether it gets finished or not), a new, very splendid novel that deviates from everything I’ve written so far [...]. It’s called ›Die Likedeeler‹.« (The Likedeelers)

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May 2022

Image: SPSG / Stefan Gehlen

Archive with sauna

The Theodor Fontane Archive is the only literary archive with a sauna in the basement. The history of the Villa Quandt provides an explanation of what this is all about. The sauna and villa can be visited on Museum Day on May 15.

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April 2022

Image: Rainer Ehrt

Graphic Novels

Illustrated novels, comic novels, and graphic novels about Fontane can be seen and read in the library and exhibition in the Theodor Fontane Archive.

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March 2022

Image: TFA

»Abednego«

Theodor Fontane’s translation of Catherine Gore’s novel Abednego the Money-Lender is a stroke of luck in the preservation of literary tradition. It was published in print for the first time in 2021.

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February 2022

Image: TFA

Photochrome Berlin

Seven photochrome postcards with views of Berlin from Fontane’s time are kept as offset prints in the picture collection of the Theodor Fontane Archive.

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January 2022

Image: TFA

What is happiness?

A postcard with a supposed Fontane quote is passed on from the retiring editor of the Fontane Blätter to the new editor. What’s the story behind the postcard and the happiness?

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December 2021

Image: TFA

Traces of reading

There are numerous marginalia in the surviving volumes of Fontane’s library. Reading with the pen in hand provides insight into practices of appropriation and adaptation.

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November 2021

Image: TFA

Stamp archives

The eventful history of the Theodor Fontane Archive is reflected in the various stamps that can be found in and on different archival materials.

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October 2021

Image: Peter Walther

Bat cave

In the month of Halloween, we take a peek into a cellar room at the Villa Quandt which was specially designed for bats during the villa’s renovation.

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September 2021

Wirtschaftsbuch von Emilie Fontane, 1873-1875Image: TFA

Debits and credits

The household account books, in which Emilie Fontane recorded all expenses and income, reveal a lot about the everyday life of the Fontane family.

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August 2021

Image: TFA

Vacation mail

As part of his extensive correspondence, Theodor Fontane also made use of the postcard, a new medium introduced in 1869/70.

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July 2021

Image: TFA

Emilie’s ink blotter

Emilie Fontane’s ink blotter is—alongside the letters themselves—one of the special items that can tell us about her letter-writing activities.

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June 2021

Image: TFA

My special book

The book that took the longest business trips from the Fontane Archive carries a French title: Souvenirs d'un prisonnier de guerre allemand en 1870.

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May 2021

Image: TFA

The Fontane bust

As an external indicator of the Theodor Fontane Archive, a bust of Fontane has been erected in front of the Villa Quandt, somewhat hidden between the trunk of a large lime tree and the building.

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You advise me to collect my ballads in order to validate myself as a poet before both the common people and the highborn.

Letter from Theodor Fontane to Paul Heyse, December 7, 1859
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