Nature's son: on the trail of Theodor Fontane, the German Charles Dickens
The train cuts west across Berlin and then veers north. Suburbs of pale stucco houses peter out into birch and pine forest. Beyond these is the Bruchland of the North German plain: sandy-soiled, marshy and latticed by canals. A few shaggy horses drink from troughs in silver fields. It’s early in the day and mist still rises from the ground.
Next to me in the carriage are local teens, travelling between towns to pass their Saturday, and young couples visiting their families in the small villages north-west of the German capital. A cluster of literature buffs have clambered aboard too.
We’re making the 90-minute journey to Neuruppin, the birthplace of 19th-century author Theodor Fontane, little-known to English readers but sometimes called the German Charles Dickens. Fontane was born on 30 December 1819 – 200 years ago this month – and the town has spent the year celebrating his bicentennial with events, tours, readings and walks.
I first discovered Fontane for myself after moving to Berlin five years ago. I read translations of his famous novels – Effi Briest and The Stechlin – and was then transfixed by his enthralling non-fiction five-volume work, Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg (Rambles through Brandenburg state), which has never been translated. Fontane took inspiration from the English habit of documenting the minutiae of rural life, and published the Wanderungen between 1862 and 1889, to render his home region in the same style.
In a country where 20th-century history weighs heavily, Fontane offers a long gaze on the landscape. Reading, I was transported to a time when the wilderness of the east became the centre of the Prussian empire, to when Berlin industrialised and the state of Brandenburg emptied as workers sought jobs in urban factories, a century after the same had started to happen in Britain. The natural world he described – with birch and alder stands in sandy soil and marshes so thick that cattle would become mired in mud – remains visible in traces today.
Heinrich Theodor Fontane (1819-1898) is regarded as Germany’s Charles Dickens. Photograph: De Agostini Picture Library/Getty Images
I’m visiting Neuruppin to follow one of Fontane’s journeys, something I’ve done often in recent years, taking footpaths from his birthplace and along the shores of the lake, Ruppiner See, looking for a thread between his past and Germany’s present. He could hardly have imagined that his hometown would become known for him: as Fontanestadt (Fontane Town).
Crowds disembark from the train and gather for local tours – Fontane’s old haunts are handily marked out for visitors – but I wander the town alone, setting a course for the lakeshore. Where he described the town bathed in summer warmth, I find cold December sun pouring over the cobbled streets. Calling Neuruppin pretty would be an understatement: rebuilt in neoclassical style following an enormous fire in 1787 (leaving it “like a loaf of bread of which only the heels remained”, wrote Fontane) the town is tidy, with wide streets and stately pastel townhouses. Miniature Christmas decorations hang from lamp posts, and a small farmers’ market occupies the central square. Still, the traces of the region’s more recent history linger: I head for the water, past the Apotheke above which Fontane was born, following Karl-Marx-Strasse and passing Friedrich-Engels Strasse – the town served as a garrison for Soviet troops from 1945 until the Wall fell.
Neuruppin’s main square: the town was rebuilt after a fire in 1787. Photograph: Jessica Lee/Guardian
Fontane’s stories centred on the everyday: the details of the landscape and the lives of villagers, the intrigues of local counts and crown princes, the beauty of their castles. He wrote of picturesque villages tucked into woodlands, and fishermen gathered on the shores, trading stories of the Seven Years’ or Napoleonic wars. Now, a wellness spa named for Fontane rises from the water, cold Nordic wood and metal against the town’s Prussian houses. Luxury apartments are under construction next door. Beyond here, paved roads turn to sand and a forest track wanders off northward. The woods feel deserted.
Fontane travelled often by boat; I decide to test the water with an icy swim. I’ve traced his boat journeys south of Berlin in much the same way and found lakeside villages still quiet despite the capital city on their doorsteps. The countryside here still manages to feel remote, unchanged. Lake Ruppin is still as Fontane described – sandy-bottomed and clear, under gentle slopes that seem at odds with the flat fields beyond. Swimming out into the cold, I can see the length of it – almost 10km end to end.
Ruppiner See makes for a bracing swim. Photograph: Alamy
Dressed and warm again, I walk a few more kilometres until the lake narrows to a canal. I reach a freshly paved road, signposted as a Fontane cycle route, and then arrive at another lake altogether: Molchowsee, lined with crumbling dachas and newly built mansions. Fontane said that despite its lack of mountains this land of lakes – the Ruppiner Schweiz (Ruppiner Switzerland) – is beautiful because of its wealth of clear waterways and vast forests. To the friendly and attentive eye, he wrote, this watery landscape could offer more than enough.
The sun dips low on the horizon so I turn back toward the railway station. As I ride home to the city past the unchanged fields, surrounded by refreshed spa visitors and Berliners clutching their novels, I see a sparrow hawk hunting along a hedgerow and count baubles of mistletoe high among the trees.
Jessica J. Lee is author of Turning: A Swimming Memoir and Two Trees Make a Forest (both Virago), and the founding editor of thewillowherbreview.com
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