Der versteckte Fontane und wie man ihn findet (review)

Anderson's writings on Fontane always provide interesting reading. The language is refreshingly nonacademic, the hypotheses original, and the findings often significant. So too in Der versteckte Fontane, where the author brings almost four decades of research experience to bear in presenting a wealth of historical and biographical detail in support of a provocative theory. Anderson introduces Versteckspiel as Fontane's strategy behind inserting into his works dates and other details relating to his biography and contemporary history, these items representing Spielsteine that, when pieced together, are found to constitute a Nebentext, a hidden biographical portrait that reveals Fontane's conscious long-term and clandestine planning and eventually even how he brought about of his own death. While similarities are evident between the Versteckspiel and Fontane's well-known technique of disguised symbolism, Anderson's emphasis on biographical master plans surely navigates uncharted territory. Riechel, Wülfing, and others have explored the mythifying and (self-)stylizing functions of dates and other details in Fontane's works, but they do not tie their significance so predominantly to Fontane's biography.

The first five chapters will be familiar to versed readers, as they are reworkings of previously published articles. The first deals with Meine Kinderjahre, where Fontane describes his predilection for hide-and-seek games. This is read by Anderson also as Fontane's elaboration of his poetological method, which Anderson illustrates by likening it to Wittgenstein's Bild and Spiel theories. The chapter also exposes hidden details of Fontane's family relations, and it establishes his early love for and rejection by Minna Krause as a model for Effi Briest. Chapter two, using Der Stechlin as an example, argues for a facsimile rather than a critical edition because the former would serve to trace the developmental stages of different versions, revealing Fontane's insertion of hidden details. Chapter three again deals with Meine Kinderjahre, this time in demonstrating how Fontane's stylized portrayal of his parents served self-therapeutical purposes and aimed to duplicate William II's own parental constellation – with the emperor targeted as a reader. Further we learn how the portrayal of Fontane's parents and children (e.g. his daughter in Frau Jenny Treibel) extends into the novels, where they appear in the guise of literary figures. In chapter four Anderson elaborates his method, bringing in Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Kuhn, and Fontane's long-standing friend Fritz Mauthner as cornerstones. The closer examination of the Mauthner connection and Fontane's knowledge of Nietzsche allow Anderson convincingly to identify Lou Andreas-Salomé as a model for Melusine von Barby in Der Stechlin. The fifth chapter finds critical provocations of Bismarck in Grete Minde and of his son in Schach von Wuthenow, discernible only to initiated contemporary readers. Chapters six and seven build on research by Seiler (Fontanes uneheliche Kinder, 1998) and Gravenkamp (Fontane als Patient, 2004) on Fontane's illegitimate children and the medical diagnoses of his depression and heart problems. Anderson interprets Fontane's depression as tied to his guilt complex, which the poet is found to deal with by making a promintent theme of illegitimate daughters in the late novels.

Chapter seven is undoubtedly the most speculative: Anderson proposes that Fontane, having been gravely ill for many years, predetermined the date (20 September 1898) and time (9:00 PM) of his death (229). This theory is supported by the suppression of the date of 20 September as well as by the frequent occurrence of suicides in Fontane's works. According to Anderson, the piecing together of the Nebentext shows that Fontane arranged all parts of his oeuvre to point to the day of his death (236–37).

Thanks to Anderson's erudition and command of historical detail, this all presents fascinating reading, but many Fontane experts will find some of the more provocative conclusions (e.g. Fontane's planning of his death) hard to swallow. Anderson's approach of tying together Fontane's life and historical time with his...