830 Literaturen germanischer Sprachen; Deutsche Literatur
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Fontane auf Französisch
(2022)
Propaganda und Poetologie
(2022)
Mit 180 Jahren Verspätung
(2022)
Post aus Felsenburg
(2022)
The German writer Wilhelm Marr is known as the father of modern antisemitism. Little attention has been paid to the fact that Marr did not coin the term “antisemitism” in his influential pamphlet Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum published in March 1879. The neologism first appeared in the name and programme of the “Antisemiten-Liga” which came to existence in September 1879. Even less attention has been paid to the fact that it was not Marr, but the Berlin chemist and engineer Hector de Grousilliers who was the initiator of this political organisation. Although Marr attended the founding meeting and joined it as a member, he played no active role in it. Grousilliers, paradoxically, first had the idea of founding a “Lessing-Verein”, before his “Antisemiten-Liga” came into being in an absurd volte-face. Carrying out a bizarre revaluation of Lessing’s Ring Parable, Grousilliers attributed antisemitic semantics to the concept of tolerance. He delivered several speeches on tolerance in the “League” before turning his attention to the publication of the antisemitic humorous-satirical magazine Die Wahrheit. Humoristisch-satirisches Wochenblatt.
This article examines scenes of Zeitungslektüre (newspaper reading) in some exemplary Fontane novels to reconstruct them as a serial narrative pattern that fills specific narrative functions similar to other narrative patterns such as letter writing or country excursions (Landpartien) which have often been shown to be typical for Fontane’s novels. These newspaper scenes can be read as multifaceted culmination points at the surface of the novel’s story in which aspects of Fontane’s writing practices, formal aspects (characterization of figures, narrative temporalities, narrative structure), autopoietic reflection as well as addresses to the readers are brought into a complex interplay. The newspaper-reading scenes are thus significant textual signals of what has been called Fontane’s specific Zeitungspoetik. The argument is unfolded by examining examples from three different genres: the historical novel Unwiederbringlich, the “Berlin everyday novels” (“Berliner Alltagsgeschichten”) Irrungen, Wirrungen and Mathilde Möhring, and the Zeitroman or political novel Der Stechlin.