Authors: Theodor Fontane
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:
business of the spirit writing
. In mid-nineteenth-century Germany the psychograph, an instrument used at séances for automatic writing of messages purporting to come from the spirit world, was an object of widespread interest.
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Eugen Richter
. Liberal politician, opponent of Bismarck in the Reichstag (1838-1908).
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Landwehr
. Territorial reserve commanded by either former or still active officers.
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Wilms
. Robert Friedrich Wilms (1824-80), Berlin surgeon, personally known to Fontane.
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Count Gröben
. Prussian major-general in the Franco-Prussian War (1817-94).
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Swedish Pomerania
. The only part of Lower Pomerania to remain in Swedish hands after the Peace of Stockholm (1720); Prussian from 1815.
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Breitling
. The estuary of the Warnow. Fontane has combined elements from the Warnow at Warnemünde and the river mouth at Swinemünde in his descriptions of the scenery round the fictitious river Kessine.
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Registrar
. The lowest rank of the civil service.
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Biliner water
. Mineral water from the Bohemian spa Bilin.
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Visby
. Old Hanseatic town on the Swedish island of Gothland. It became Swedish in 1648.
Page 79
: Jürgen
Wullenweber
(1492-1537), mayor of Lübeck who tried unsuccessfully to defend the Hanseatic League and Protestantism against the Bishop of Bremen.
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Stockholm Bloodbath
. In 1520 King Christian II of Denmark ordered the execution of 600 Swedes who had taken part in an uprising against Danish rule.
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Eichsfeld
. Catholic enclave south-west of the Harz mountains.
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: ‘
Reeperbahn’
. North German: a long, sheltered area where rope was twisted.
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Königgrätz
. Decisive Prussian victory over the Austrians on July 3rd, 1866. Also referred to as the Battle of Sadowa in English.
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Assessor
. Higher civil service post.
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exact words from the Bible
. Revelation iii.16: ‘So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.’
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Rock of St Peter… Rocher de Bronze
. The Catholic Church, an allusion to Jesus’s words in Matthew xvi. 18 by reference to which the papal succession goes back to Peter. The ‘bronze rock’ of Prussia is Bismarck.
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Justizrat
. Title granted to a respected lawyer without a civil service post.
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Vionville
. Prussian victory over the French near Metz on August 16th, 1870.
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: ‘
War in Peace’, ‘Monsieur Hercules’, Wilbrandt’s ‘Young Love’… Gensichen’s ‘Euphrosyne’. Krieg im Frieden
(1881), comedy by Gustav von Moser and Franz von Schöntan;
Monsieur Herkules
(1863), farce by Georg Friedrich Belly;
Jugendliebe
(1871), comedy by Adolf Wilbrandt;
Euphrosyne
(1877), play by Otto Franz Gensichen on the subject of Goethe’s love for the actress Christiane Neumann-Becker who died young.
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Castalian Spring
. Spring on Mount Parnassus at Delphi to which powers of poetic inspiration have been attributed since the nymph Castalia, according to legend, threw herself into it to escape the pursuit of Apollo.
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opera
. Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera
The Prophet
(1849), whose hero is the Dutch Anabaptist Jan Bochold von Leyden (1509-36).
Page 97
: Johann Bernard
Basedow
(1723-90) and Johann Heinrich
Pestalozzi
(1746-1827) were among the most famous educationists of their time.
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Schnepfenthal, Bunzlau
. Christian educational institutions in Thüringen and Silesia respectively, the latter referring to the pietistical Herrnhuter community at Gnadenfrei.
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cherub with the sword
. According to Genesis iii.24 God placed ‘Cheru-bims, and a flaming sword’ to guard the garden of Eden after the expulsion of Adam and Eve.
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Vineta
. According to legend the sunken town lies at the bottom of the sea off the Baltic island of Usedom.
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Heine’s poem
. Heine based his poem
Seegespenst (Sea Spectre
, 1827), of which Crampas gives a slightly distorted account, on the Vineta legend.
Page 100
: ‘
You have diamonds’, ‘Fingers soft…’
. First lines of poems from Heine’s collection
Buch der Lieder
(1827). The word ‘soft’ has been added by Crampas.
Page 101
: ‘
The giver, not the gift…’
. In the original Crampas’s punning reply, literally translated, is: ‘A basket lid is not a basket’, which plays on the German idiom
jemandem einen Korb geben
(‘to give someone a basket’) meaning ‘to turn someone down’.
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companion piece
. Heine’s poem
Spanische Atriden
in the collection
Romanzero
, Book 2.
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:
Elizabeth’s mother
. Anne Boleyn. Hulda is embarrassed because the name sounds like the German for ‘mistress’,
Buhle
.
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Order of the Black Eagle, Pour le Mérite
. Prestigious Prussian decorations, the first introduced by Friederich I on his coronation in 1701, the second by Frederick the Great on his accession to the throne in 1740.
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:
Josephine factory
. Glass factory near Schreiberhau in the Giant Mountains, Silesia.
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King of Ultima Thule
. In Goethe’s ballad
Der König von Thule
the king is given a goblet by his ‘mistress’
(Buhle = rhyming appendage)
as she dies.
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:
Friedrichsruh
. A property of Bismarck’s near Hamburg, purchased with largesse from the Kaiser on the founding of the Empire in 1871.
Page 105
: ‘
Buhküken von Halberstadt’
. Nursery rhyme about the eleventh-century Bishop Burkhard II of Halberstadt, in the Harz region, who was kind to children.
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One False Step… Arthur von Schmettwitz
. Arthur is the husband of the heroine Ella – Effi’s role – in Ernst Wichert’s romantic comedy
Ein Schritt vom Wege
(1872). In this piece about mistaken identity the young aristocratic couple face an awkward situation in a spa hotel when Arthur loses his money and papers and receives a bill for a champagne breakfast. Ella is disguised as ‘Signora Carlina’, a famous singer from Milan, and gives a concert to cover the cash-flow problem. Coincidentally the ruler of the pricipality is rumoured to be travelling incognito with an opera singer. Arthur is then mistaken for the prince and his wife for the lady of dubious respectability, while the real prince is suspected of highway robbery. The plot casts ironic light on social assumptions and the importance
of appearances. This is another of Fontane’s subtle strategies for presenting his characters in shifting constellations to explore hidden aspects of their lives and aspirations and reflect on the relativity and superficiality of social values. The dramatist Wichert held a high position in the judiciary.
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Kammergerichtsrat… Königsberg
. Ironic allusion to the fact that Wichert, writer of comic plays, was both highly placed in the Prussian judiciary and came from the home town of Immanuel Kant, who developed the idea of the ‘categorical imperative’ based on the concept of duty.
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Seven beauties… Hans Sachs
. Allusion to Boccaccio, via Hans Sachs’s version. In Boccaccio’s story
Ameto
there are seven beautiful nymphs symbolizing the Seven Virtues. By jumping into the water with the nymphs the simple youth Ameto acquires their virtues. Innstetten’s remark reflects a curious combination of morality and eroticism.
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Schleswig under Wrangel and Bonin
. The uprising of Schleswig-Holstein against the Danish threat of annexation in 1848 was supported by Prussia in a campaign led by Wrangel (see note to
page 40
) and General Eduard von Bonin.
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:
the storming of the Danewerk
. The old Danish frontier wall was taken by a successful Prussian attack during the Battle of Schleswig on April 23rd, 1848.
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Teutonic Knights in Marienburg
. The seat of the semi-religious order founded during the crusades was transferred in 1308 from Acre to Marienburg Castle in West Prussia (now Malbork in Poland). Its banqueting hall has a fine vaulted ceiling.
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:
Oliva Abbey
. Cistercian Abbey near Danzig.
Page 111
: Joachim
Nettelbeck
(1738-1824). Exemplary Prussian patriot; as mayor, together with Major Schill and the town commandant Neithard von Gneisenau, he led the successful defence of Kolberg against Napoleonic troops in 1807.
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legendary king
. Sigurd Ring appears in
Frithiofs Saga
, a Swedish epic poem (1825) by Esaias Tegnér based on an old Norse saga.
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Köslin
. Town in Eastern Pomerania near the Baltic coast (now Koszalin in Poland).
Page 113
: ‘
three rings’
. Allusion to the parable of the rings in
Nathan der Weise
(
Nathan the Wise
, 1779), Lessing’s play about religious tolerance. The rings stand for the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths.
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:
Lake Gothen
. Lies between Gothen and Heringsdorf on the island of Usedom.
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Radegast and Swantowit
. Slav deities: Radigast – god of reason and mental powers; Swatowit – the holy or bright conqueror.
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Luther… Table Talk
. Johann Aurifaber’s sixteenth-century edition of conversations recorded at Martin Luther’s table by students and friends was regarded as edifying reading in Protestant households in Germany.
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Dressel’s
. Exclusive restaurant on Unter den Linden.
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Ministerialrat
. Head of a section within a Prussian ministry department.
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Friesack
. Town in the District of Potsdam where Fontane has located Hohen-Cremmen.
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Tiergarten
. Extensive park from which the elegant district of Berlin just to the west of the centre takes its name.
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Kladderadatsch
. Satirical Berlin weekly: two lieutenants,
Strudelwit and Prudelwit
, and
Charlie Miessnick
, a schoolboy, were recurrent characters in it. At first leftwing, it later supported Bismarck.
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Wee Wippy from Bernau
. Character in the Berlin satirical paper
Berliner Wespen (Berlin Wasps)
. Wippchen produced humorous reports of the Russo-Turkish War (1877/78) direct from Bernau on the outskirts of Berlin.
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plovers’ eggs
. A favourite dish of Bismarck’s.
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:
bad joke
. In the original, the answer, translated literally, to Dagobert’s punning riddle is: ‘No more sorrow shall befall you’, and is taken from the Book of Job.
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:
Geheimrat
. Privy Councillor, a purely honorary title.
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Willibald Alexis
. Historical novelist (1798-1871).
Die Hosen des Herrn von Bredow
(
Baron Bredow’s Breeches
, 1846) is his most popular work.
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:
Rummschüttel
. The name is slightly comical and suggests ‘to shake about’.
Page 149
: ‘
A little lamb white as snow’
. Line from ‘Das Lämmchen’, a nursery rhyme by Friedrich Julius Bertuch (1747-1822).
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Helm’s… Red Castle… Hiller’s
. Helm’s and Hiller’s were exclusive restaurants and the Red Castle was the nickname for commercial premises with an imposing redbrick façade on the Schlossplatz.
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Chancellor’s Palace
. Innstetten signs the book laid out for birthday congratulations to Bismarck on April 1st in the Imperial Chancellor’s Palace on Wilhelmstrasse.
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Charlottenburg Palace
. The Royal Palace a few miles to the west of the city centre was built in the eighteenth century as a summer residence for the Prussian King.
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Belvedere
. Pavilion in Charlottenburg Palace park where the medium Johann Rudolf Bischoffswerder, a favourite of Friedrich Wilhelm II (1744-97), conducted séances.
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Grosser Stern
. A large roundabout in the Tiergarten on the axis joining the Royal Palace to Charlottenburg Palace.
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Rügen:
Island on the Baltic coast, a popular holiday destination.
Page 152
: Major Ferdinand von
Schill
(1776-1809). Commander of a regiment of Prussian Hussars who led the struggle to liberate Prussia from Napoleon, and fell at Stralsund on the Baltic in the attempt.
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:
Scheele
. Karl Wilhelm Scheele (1742-86).
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goddess Hertha
. Nerthus or Hertha, goddess of the earth and fertility, worshipped by Germanic tribes round the Baltic and the North Sea. There is no evidence that the cult of Nerthus ever existed on Rügen.
Lake Hertha lies north of Sassnitz.