Before the Storm
A Prussian War & Peace Where Tolstoy Meets Fontane

2,716 words

Theodor Fontane

Theodor Fontane (1819-1898) is widely regarded in Europe as the major example of German realist writing in the second half of the nineteenth century, although Americans have barely heard of him, obsessed as we are (or at least our German Lit. departments and New York arbiters of taste) with Thomas Mann.

Fontane, a Prussian descendant of French protestant refugees, started life as a pharmacist but abandoned that trade for writing. He progressed with methodical skill, from journalism to war correspondence (captured during the Franco-Prussian war), and in his fifties felt ready for fiction.Vor Dem Sturm (Before the Storm), published in 1878, was his first novel, chronicling a few weeks from Christmas season 1812 to February, 1813, a critical time for Prussia, Germany, and Napoleon.

After Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign, central Europe saw a chance to break free of Napoleonic control. Russia and Prussia were on their way to forming an alliance. Austria, while still allied to Napoleon, was interested. British loans, as always, stoked another coalition against Napoleon. Of Napoleon’s 600,000 man Grand Army that invaded Russia, almost half were from the various German states. Many German princes were having second and third thoughts about being allied to Napoleon, and were ready to join another coalition if the major players signed on. 

So, a novel of this period should have been one of grand military scope, intense political discussion, heroic endeavors with cries of Freiheit und Vaterland! from Germany and especially Prussia. This was what many Germans in 1878 wanted from Fontane. It wasn’t what they got. 

Before the Storm is a story of the pre-war time, and in it Fontane regales the reader with a dense and intimate study of people and land. The characters involved are a wide mix of village and noble society, especially dealing with Berndt Von Vitzewitz, Lord of Hohen-Vietz, Lewin and Renate, his son and daughter.

There are hopes that a double marriage might take place with the the offspring of Alexander Von Ladalinski, a Polish count who has melded into Prussian society, and his offspring, Tubal and Kathinka. Here lie the trappings of a Jane Austen novel, but Fontane branches into the Prussian world as shown in the Mark Brandenburg.  

Fontane wrote a series of travelogues on Mark Brandenburg over the years, even taking long walking tours through this region, and a reader may infer that this novel is as much travelogue as it is novel, a generally fatal flaw for a writer. “We want characters,” literacy critics demand, “Characters!” They are here, but Fontane makes the land as much a character as its people, and he asserts an eternal continuity that we catch in this two-month storyline. Where Tolstoy gives many (and brilliant if at times long-winded) observations on politics, Napoleon, etc., Fontane lets us overhear his characters’ thoughts instead of paraphrasing it for us. There is little of the omniscient third voice here.  

Fontane divided fiction into the einheitsroman (one view) and vielheitsroman (multiple views). Fontane prefers the latter in Before the Storm. The setting of the book, in the months just after Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow and the alliance of Prussia and Russia that began the war of liberation, begins in Christmas cheer, reflection, a rural epiphany coming before a political Lent. While Prussia was under semi-occupation, no one in the Mark is suffering particularly. Like in Jane Austen’s world, you’d never know there was a war. Well, almost. As folk in the Mark Brandenburg prepare for Christmas with lots of snow, vacant landscapes and sleigh bells tinkle as they whiz back and forth, ragged lines of retreating soldiers trudge past. Lewin stops by one straggling line, finds they are part of the German forces used by Napoleon, and consoles them as best as he can.  

We catch the ensemble of this rural Prussia. Besides Berndt and his family, there is a rivalry between the pastor Seidentopf and  Justice Turgany. They argue over faith and history. Seidentopf collects antiquities, among them a small sculpture called Odin’s Chariot, which he presumes to be an example of classical life present in the Mark. No, Turgany disagrees. It came later. Their debate centers on the Wends, the original inhabitants, driven out or absorbed by the Germans when, led by the Teutonic Knights, sought to colonize the east, a German passion that found a disastrous conclusion in Hitler’s Drang Nach Ost to seize Russia. 

Certainly their debate over the merits of a heroic or ordinary life is a major theme of the novel, and people are caught up in it in their own lives. When they stab at heroism, they are lacking.  

Others, like Schwarwenka, an innkeeper; Othegraven, a schoolmaster seeking his destiny; and so many others are detailed. Yet their lives are stimulating and the dialogue lively and human. This is very much an ensemble piece. The ordinary civic life of these people is always entwined with the land, its plains, forests, streams which is almost a cosmic narrator to this human world. There aren’t witches and fairies, but there is Hoppenmarieken, a female dwarf who lives in a shack, rarely talks except to bang her staff, and has become the postman for the area, delivering the mail from nearby Frankfurt. Her odd little hut is full of caged birds, and while kept at a distance, she is accepted and even needed, a spirit guide to the Mark and its residents.  

While men debate, work, and, when things get political, plot, the women in this story provide a spiritual base to the Mark and God. Aunt Schorlemmer, Brandt’s sister, provides much arguing for God, Lutheran hymns and maxims always on her lips, but she isn’t hypocritical or small-minded. Schorlemmer reflects a vibrant Christian/ Lutheran faith still very strong. A contrast is Countess Amelie, representing the older aristocratic order, who, like much of the aristocracy, speaks in French as much as German, looking back and imitating Frederick the Great, the former Prussian king who is a kind of  George Washington to these Prussians.  

Amelie and her world distrust the growing German romanticism people like Othegraven and Lewin represent. When a production of Wiliam Tell is offered, now a folk hero for resisting imperial and foreign rule, she prefers a French instead of German production. Again, the sense of a new sensibility of nation and people is on the cusp of development. Fontane captures a spiritual night before Christmas before presents are opened. 

Fontane shows a divide coming between all the partying, salons, and sleigh rides. The main couples reflect it. Lewin is the probing idealist, caught up in his affection for Kathinka but also admiring Maria, Kniehause’s adopted daughter, a ten-year old circus performer taken in by the town and admired. Adopted at Christmas, Marie was always has a spiritual presence, considered a Christmas and fairy child, but Marie is neither ephemeral nor doomed. She is a solid character, and Fontane’s story delves in Lewin’s choice between Kathinka and Marie. Although more approachable than Hoppenmarieken, Renate, on the other hand, is more rational and distant. She recalls Fanny in Austen’s Mansfield Park, an outsider, observer, and figure of wisdom in contrast to Kathinka, who is courtly and prefers life in Berlin with her father.  

The female characters presage what will be major theme of Fontane’s fiction, where the women uphold the values of the Prussian state, its Junkertum: simplicity, honor, and directness. In later works, like Frau Jenny Treible or, Fontane’s regarded masterpiece Effi Briest, these older virtues compete with a new crass and militaristic Prussia of the Wilhelminan age. Here, older Prussia is still extant, and a comparison between the America of the antebellum age and post Civil War gilded age is apt. Renate is direct and fair. Marie is described thusly: “What she had she loved, and what she did not have she did not miss.” Marie is “brave and submissive. Above all, she is true.” 

While Kathinka and Tubal are readily accepted by the Hohen-vietz family, they are caught up in politics. They were part of Poland annexed by Prussia in the 1790s. Count Ladalinski, their father, has made his peace with Prussia, but a new Polish nation semi-created by Napoleon is starting to claim the allegiance of his children. Where do they fit in Mark Brandenburg? As Count Ladalinski puts it, the Polish in Prussia lack a enter of gravity. Tubal and Kathinka “grew up but were not brought up.” 

Indeed, where does Prussia fit in at all? The crisis of 1812 leaves Prussia open to revolt,  continuing a national recovery since its disastrous defeat in 1806 at Jena and Auerstadt, which figures prominently among the cast,  but they, like Prussia, are caught up in what to do. Openly resist the French or wait and see what happens? The historical background is important, and R.J. Hollindale’s translation I read has an excellent foreword and notes.  

Prussia, defeated by Napoleon, nevertheless slowly rebuilt itself, initiated military and public reforms, and the general tone of Fontane’s characters is one of optimism. After the retreat from Moscow, King Frederick William dithered over what to do. Napoleon, to punish the Prussians, kept their army assigned to invade Russia guarding the flanks, especially in the north. 

This was seen as a humiliation, but it actually saved Prussia, because its contingent to the Grand Army avoided the catastrophe of the retreat, and in January of 1813, General Yorck put the Prussian corps under Russian command, leading to the first stage of the liberation, but in doing this he disobeyed orders.  

It’s tricky situation everyone in the book worries over. They want to be obedient, but taking action without orders? Not very Prussian. Of course they want the French to leave, but isn’t it best to wait for the King to order them into action? But the King retreats to Silesia, mulling. Having earlier been defeated, his philosophy is once bitten twice shy. He waits for good, strong, allies.  

In Berlin, one of the royal advisors favors “A policy of procrastination as being the only policy to pursue, Time alone will resolve our confusion and perplexity.” Berndt urges that the King listen to the people, but the advisor reports the King distrusts people who may in the end become a mob. “For he places good order above everything. With a unified enemy he knows where he is, with a many-headed mob he never does…He values the social order more highly than the political. And in that he is right.” 

The spirit of liberation spreads to Hohen-Vietz, and Berndt forms a militia to strike at the nearest fortress in Frankfurt. The gathering of forces and subsequent action became not a stirring chapter of defiance and heroism, but a muddle that resembles Mark Twain’s The Private History of Campaign That Failed than an ode to Preussens Gloria. 

It reads as being very anti-climactic and unheroic, but also very human and realistic as these Prussian citizen soldiers do their best. As it is, Lewin is captured, and a rescue attempt is far more successful, although not without personal tragedy. 

Another interesting factor is how Prussians view their neighbors. Throughout the book France is disliked, but the French soldiers in the story aren’t shown as bad sorts. The Russians are admired and seen as liberators. All of the Mark is excited at the arrival of Cossacks nearby. Unlike the traditional dread Jews have of them, to Prussia, they are the vanguard of freedom. In one of his many debates with Seidentopf, Turgany argues that the “rejuvenation of Europe lay between the Don and Dneiper.” Turgany concludes with a loud “long live Russia!” 

In chapter eleven of book three, Borodino, A German officer reads his account of the battle, noting Russian ferocity, French and German bravery, and marks how battered was the Grand Army. “We were only the ruins of what we had been,” he concludes. There is no animosity towards Russia.  

This foreshadows the 19th century peace Prussia and Russia enjoyed. Certainly recent events in Ukraine shows how missed that generous alliance is over Germany’s now quirky bonds to the EU, NATO, and American suzerainty. 

One of the endearing things about this work is how Fontane steps away from the expected drama of war and politics and goes deeper into people caught up in it. He steps away from the awaited climax and turns to small issues of the Mark Brandenburg, and how 

Its continuity overrides the “great” historical concerns. There is war, true, but there are centuries of life in the Mark. Continuation and tradition, be it Prussian or Christian,  is more desired than victory. 

The above attack on Frankfurt is a major example, but so is Book two, chapter fourteen, titled Something Happens.  It describes a burglary at Hohen-Vietz that frightens everyone, Renate Almost taken, and an aroused community thinks it the work of French deserters…such men have been stumbling through the land since the retreat…but a low-key investigation turns out to discover a more mundane explanation where Hoppenmarieken plays a semi-sordid part. 

I enjoyed losing myself in this book and its characters, narrative, and the fusion of people with their land. Volkisch, certainly, but without the aggressiveness of what the twentieth century gave to the world. The people of Mark Brandenburg want to be left alone to their pubs, sleigh rides, holiday parties, hymns, and discussions about…well, almost everything.  

Although Lewin and Renate are very much featured, the book is a true ensemble piece.  

I’m reminded of Wilder’s Our Town, or the magnificent Moonflower Vine of Jetta Carleton, where the land, people, and mores of southwest Missouri eats into you (reviewed in CC June 28, 2021). Like Before the Storm, the land is almost a cast member, and the book is full of Bible verses, hymns, folk wisdom and people revisiting old haunts and rediscovering themselves. 

Like when I discovered War and Peace, I spent a happy week immersing myself in the salons, dinner tables and woods of Lewin, Renate, Brandt, and Hoppemarieken. It was a very pleasing visit. 

Part of that visit is going to a Prussia not hated or propagandized into being a military nightmare. I was very bothered by recent posts on Sonar 21, a site which is solidly pro-Russia, which I have no problems with, but there is almost daily bile blaming Germans, Nazis, Neo-Nazis for all of the postwar problems, and Russia as the eternal victim. The poor, peace-loving USSR. Some posts even gleefully anticipate the Germans being bombed into extinction, and a couple praised the destruction of Dresden. I’ve become very sick of Kraut haters, and spending time in Hohen-Vietz was a rest and recuperation from the world, especially the waspish realm of the Internet. Before the Storm is not unlike War and Peace. It has to be read slowly. I spent a week of my life on Tolstoy, and as much on Fontane, missing such immersive reading. 

Daniel Mendelsohn’s article in The New Yorker on Fontane (Heroine Addict, March 7, 2011) quoted how readers at the time: 

Found “Before the Storm” a disconcertingly becalmed work: the author’s
Languid eavesdropping was, they found, ill suited to a subject that
Raised expectations of high color and excitement. (“Will they sit down
At the table again? Will they go to sleep again?” One of Fontane’s
Many correspondents wrote of the characters in that “silly” book). 

While Mendelsohn argued Fontane developed his later works in enlarging female characters representing energies and emotions, I think the same female strength is very apparent in this novel, and how female regeneration is needed. Lewin almost dies in a snowstorm over Kathinka, and it is Renate and Marie who restore him and through them and this emotional mishap he grows and matures.   

In the later nineteenth century, Germans wanted their Prussia to be one of trumpets and helmets. They forgot the other side, with the dichotomy of their hero, Frederick the Great. A true war leader, but also devoted to culture and the arts, a devoted and excellent flute player, laying the base for a Prussia devoted to order and law. Discipline, yes, but preferably before (A Lutheran) God’s dictates. I enjoyed how the world of Hohen-Vietz mixed both worlds and sought reconciliation with national duty but reverence for the commonplace and homeland. It is a world Miss Austen and Mr. Dickens would have been glad to visit. I certainly enjoyed my walking tour through its pages.