Black devil and iron angel: the railway in nineteenth-century German realism

4. Theodor Fontane

[] THEODOR FONTANE Aus einem edlen Stamme Sproß er, der Junker Dampf: DasWasser und die Flamme, Sie zeugten ihn im Kampf Of noble origins He sprang, the squire steam: The water and the flame, They forged him in struggle Theodor Fontane,“Der Junker Dampf” (The Squire Steam) () Theodor Fontane was born in Neuruppin near Berlin in , more than twenty-five years before the first steam-driven German railway, the Bavarian Nürnberg-Fürth line, was built.1 By , when Fontane published Vor dem Sturm (Before the Storm), his first major work of fiction, the German railway system was flourishing. For him, the rail was therefore not something startlingly new.2 Unlike the Heines of the world, Fontane did not perceive an uncanny horror or monster in the  . James M. Brophy, Capitalism, Politics, and Railroads in Prussia, 1830–1870 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, ), . . In fact, Fontane contributed to a journal called Die Eisenbahn (The train.3 But this does not mean that Heinimann is right to diminish the importance of the railway in Fontane’s works by suggesting that it had been already assimilated into literature by the time Fontane was writing. Heinimann takes this argument too far when he suggests that, for Fontane, the relationship between man, technology, and nature was no longer problematic.4 Fontane certainly does look at this relationship, but he does so in a very different way from Rosegger and Auerbach. Literary representations of technology in Fontane are often unobtrusive and even hidden.5 With the possible exception of one scene in Cécile, the train is never depicted as dramatically as it is in the works of Rosegger and Auerbach. It is never the fiery dragon or the iron devil. This does not mean that the train is a less important device in the works of Fontane. He is yet another author who tried to accommodate the old and the new,and he could not help seeing the relationship between man, technology, and nature as problematic . It may seem odd to be discussing myth in the work of an acclaimed realist like Fontane, but he does frequently rely on ghost stories, fairytales,Wagner operas, and so on.As a realist he is supposed to scorn romantic or idealized notions, but he never does so entirely. In fact, notions like these are often closely related to literary devices like the railway in his work. As Segeberg correctly points out, the train in Effi Briest plays a role similar to that of Instetten’s Asian ghost.6 Thus Mahr seems off base when he surmises that nineteenth-century authors encountered irresolvable conflicts when they tried to depict new technological innovations within older imaginative constructs and the lanTheodor Fontane  Railway)—a liberal journal so named mainly for the modernistic sound of Eisenbahn rather than for its direct connection with the railway. . See Heine, SämtlicheWerke, :–. . Heinimann, Technische Innovation, . . Harro Segeberg, Literatur im technischen Zeitalter:Von der Frühzeit der Deutschen Aufklärung bis zum Beginn des Ersten Weltkriegs (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, ), . . Ibid., . guage of the past.7 If Mahr were correct, Fontane would have had to abandon the three witches in his poem “Die Brück’ am Tay” (The Bridge over the Tay) (), the Place of the Witch’s Dance in his novel Cécile (), and the ghost in Effi Briest (), but to abandon these was to abandon the familiar narrative . Fontane apparently saw no irresolvable conflict in depicting these mythical figures in a work of realism. In fact, the resolution of this apparent conflict is the essence of Fontane’s realist aesthetic. Fontane’s Realism The crux of Fontane’s aesthetic lies in his concept of Verkl ärung (transfiguration), an idea, according to Hugo Aust, that Fontane embraced as a literary antidote taken to prevent literature from sinking to the level of the scientific essay.8 In his programmatic  essay “Unsere epische und lyrische Poesie seit ” (Our Epic and Lyric Poetry since ), Fontane often used the metaphor of raw materials to express this aspect of his literary theory. In an implicit critique ofYoung Germany and a prefiguration of naturalism, he wrote,“Vor allen Dingen verstehen wir nicht darunter [realismus] das nackte Wiedergeben alltäglichen Lebens, am wenigsten seines Elends und seiner Schattenseiten.l.l.l.Es ist noch nicht allzu lange her,daß man .l.l. bei Darstellung eines sterbenden Proletariers, den hungernde Kinder umstehen .l.l...