Part 2: Traces of His Works

Fontane prepared each of his larger works with a variety of notes, sketches, and collections of material. Even in the course of writing, several manuscripts of works were usually created, for example, when a copy made by himself or by his wife Emilie was subjected to a renewed process of deletions, changes, and additions. In the process, Fontane often used sheets more than once and, after one work was printed, used the backs for another.

On the basis of the surviving materials, important steps in the creation of the novella Grete Minde can be traced. Sketches of the location studies that Fontane conducted in Tangermünde are found in a notebook. In later notes, the locations are described in more detail; finally, the plot is sketched out in 14 »situations«. Only a few, heavily revised pages of the work manuscript have survived. In the case of Grete Minde, a copy intended for printing has not survived.

(opens enlarged image) — **Notebook, »TFA Notizbuch E 5«, p. 11r (property of the Berlin State Library).**

In July 1878, Fontane traveled to Tangermünde to study the settings for his planned novella. In his notebook he recorded, among other things, the layout of the town. To support his recollections, Fontane labeled the most important local features in the sketch. The notebook also contains first textual drafts of Grete Minde, interspersed with invoices and notes on other works.

**Drafts and sketches, TFA Kd 1, p. 1v.**

Based on the sketches and notes made on site, Fontane compiled more detailed information on the locations of the novella at his desk at home and recorded thoughts on necessary additions. With regard to the church of St. Stephen, for example, it states:

»Here I must adhere entirely to the

old description and that of the

Marien-Kirche in Lübeck. Now

there is nothing at all.«

Among the descriptions, there are already bullet point remarks about scenes in the novella.

Before he began to write Grete Minde, Fontane had sketched the plot in 14 »situations« and, in this context, had considered the location of the events described. The fact that he was able to draw on the Tangermünde notes in this process is evident from the references to the notebook and from the takeovers from the notebook. Ultimately, not all of these »situations« were included in the novella; conversely, the novella contains chapters that are not set in any »situation«.

One sheet of the manuscript of the work Grete Minde has survived as the reverse side in a bundle of drafts of the story Storch von Adebar, which has remained fragmentary. Fontane first added ink to his own text in several steps, then revised it with red chalk and added inserts in the margins and between the lines. If all corrections and additions are taken into account, the wording already corresponds, with a few exceptions, to that of the print in the magazine Nord und Süd that preceded the book edition published by Wilhelm Hertz.

Fontane was a »paper worker«; his works are the product of hard and tedious proofreading. In ever new attempts, he put variants of the same section of text on paper, polished it, corrected and added between the lines and at the edges of the page. If a passage was to be completely erased or had become illegible due to the intensive revision, he sometimes resorted to scissors and glue and pasted over the passage in question with a piece of paper on which the new, improved version was written. Typical of Fontane’s working method are short reflections in which he commented on and organized his work.

Fontane’s meticulous textual work can be illustrated by the drafts of various chapters from Der Stechlin, especially several pages at the end of Fontane’s last novel.

The notes on this sheet do not represent Fontane’s first attempt to make the end of Stechlin take shape. In ink and in large letters, he first wrote down his reflections on earlier drafts:

»The ending of the

novel must be quite

different from

the first draft.

Much shorter.«

In pencil and in much smaller type, Fontane then transcribed his reflections on the same sheet.

On this sheet, Fontane had initially drafted a letter in its entirety. Traces on the paper indicate that he must have later pasted over the letter concept with another sheet, which may have contained the preceding novel text. In reviewing the convolute, Fontane finally assigned the manuscript page in blue pencil to the »conclusion of the final chapter«, but also referred to other material:

»Compare: the conclusion on the

following sheet.«

Fontane discarded the upper part of this manuscript page during his review and crossed it out in blue pencil, although the wording of the novel’s final twist is already quite close to the final version. In the lower part, the page closes with the wording as found in the printed text, which is why it could be the last page of the convolute:

»Or (at the end):

not necessary that the

Stechline continue to live,

but long live

the Stechlin.«

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