Theodor Fontane. Ängstliche Moderne. Über das Imaginäre by Gerhard von Graevenitz (review)

This expansive monograph stands out among recent work that brings media historiography to bear on Fontane. Scholars have addressed how literary market conditions affect realist writing (Rudolph Helmstetter, Manuela Günter), how Fontane’s works register transformations in transportation and communication (Joseph Vogl) and recirculate representations of non-European places and peoples (Daniela Gretz), as well as how Fontane’s writing process depends on the collation of disparate medial sources (Petra McGillen). In this ongoing discussion about Fontane’s “medial realism,” Ängstliche Moderne stands out as an overarching, synthetic Entwurf, not least because of Graevenitz’s systematic investigation of visual culture and its fundamental role in the medialization of the literary imagination. Graevenitz’s basic suggestion is that Fontane responds to, contributes to, and critically diagnoses the unruly proliferation of images (Bilderflut) characteristic of modernity. The book thereby contextualizes Fontane against the backdrop of the nineteenth-century periodical landscape and brings his ballads and novels into dialogue with the visual arts, in particular with the work of Adolph Menzel.

The book’s subtitle is likely intended as a provocation, stressing “the imaginary” rather than “the real”; Graevenitz is certainly concerned, though, with providing a structural account of the interplay between the two in Fontane’s realism. As he describes it, the imaginary is a collective field of social, political, and cultural images that articulates itself in and through a variety of media ensembles. Drawing on Reinhart Koselleck and Aleida Assmann, Graevenitz argues that the imaginary emerged in the nineteenth century as a collective singular (“the imaginary,” rather than multiple “images” or “imaginations”) much in the same way as “history.” But in its singularity, the collective imaginary is paradoxically characterized by a plurality of images, by intersecting heterogeneous and divided parts, for the institutions and media that set it in motion are themselves mixed media ensembles. Paradigmatic for this mixture is the illustrated periodical—nineteenth-century modernity is a “Zeitungsmoderne” (345)—as well as museums, exhibitions, panoramas, and genre painting. This emphasis on visual culture is clearly evident in the book’s three parts: “Bilder und Helden,” “Bilder und Balladen,” and “Bilder und Romane.” Graevenitz calls Fontane’s novels “Bilderromane” (207), whose basic principle of representation is the “mixture of mixed media” (337). Additionally—and this goes to the first part of the book’s title—Graevenitz argues that the Angst, identified by Fontane’s contemporaries and historians alike, as characteristic of the nineteenth century is in part an effect of the endless recirculation of images. Anxious modernity is medialized modernity, a modernity that produces the feeling that the individual actor—and reader/viewer—cannot escape the collective imaginary.

The scope of Theodor Fontane. Ängstliche Moderne is quite remarkable, ranging from discussions of social and aesthetic theorists contemporary with Fontane, studies of paintings and printed images from a variety of historical eras, and lengthy consideration of Fontane’s ballads, a topic that largely gets lost in most Fontane scholarship. The book’s first part begins with a literary-historiographical discussion about the relationship of biography and oeuvre, and it addresses Fontane’s conservatism and the social milieu in which he arose as a writer. It then moves to an extended discussion of Menzel and the “Doppelbild,” a key concept for Graevenitz. Menzel’s Jubiläumsblatt für die Heckmann-Werke, Atelierwand, and Eisenwalzwerk are each structured both by the drive toward self-evident unity and by the juxtaposition of heterogeneous elements, and each works with the tension between allegorical framing and quasi-naturalistic scenery. “Doppelbilder” bring multiple visual principles or visual worlds (Bildwelten) into resonance, thereby modeling the kind of plural Bilder at work in Fontane’s texts. This section links Fontane’s depiction of historical figures to other modes of memorialization, including Menzel’s images of Frederick the Great, the nineteenth-century boom in monuments, and Moritz Lazarus’s and Jacob Burckhardt’s theories of heroic individuality. In the book’s second part, Graevenitz situates Fontane...