These were the years when Bismarck embarked on the wars that unified Germany and saw the King of Prussia proclaimed Kaiser of a new German Reich at Versailles in 1871, so at the same time Fontane found himself chronicling Bismarck’s military campaigns, in books on the war in Schleswig-Holstein against Denmark, then the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars. In 1870 he was appointed theatre critic on the liberal Vossische Zeitung for which he wrote regular notices for the next twenty years. He published volumes of ballads and poems in 1851, 1861 and 1875. All this was excellent preparation and made him better informed than any other writer of his time, but it left little time for fiction, and though he started his first novel, Before the Storm (Vor dem Sturm) in 1862, he took until 1878 to finish it. So it was at the age of fifty-eight that Fontane launched his career as a novelist with a historical narrative that views a community from multiple perspectives while Napoleon retreats from Russia somewhere offstage. He wrote sixteen more works of fiction before his death in 1898. Before the Storm was followed by a series of social and psychological novels, often subterraneously political, which put Berlin on the literary map for the first time. Of these Delusions, Confusions (Irrungen, Wirrungen), Cécile and Frau Jenny Treibel stand out as close-ups of characteristic segments of Berlin life - not as genre-paintings in words but as portrayals of individual lives that point beyond themselves to wider truths about society and humanity.

In choosing plots for his novels Fontane preferred to start from fact. In this respect the genesis of Effi Briest is typical. Fontane described his novel as ‘a story of adultery no different from a hundred others’.4 He had heard of the scandal in 1888 or 1889 from a friend, and the lady involved, Elisabeth Baroness von Plotho, was still alive so he was understandably concerned that she might recognize herself when the novel appeared. Unlike Effi she survived to the age of ninety-nine, dying in 1952, having divorced her husband in 1887 and devoted herself to a career in nursing. Her husband Armand Léon von Ardenne was an officer and aristocrat from an estate near Rathenow. He was only five years older than her and frequented her parents’ house. The seventeen-year-old Else, as she was known, was often prevailed upon to come indoors and listen to him playing the piano, and the detail of her red-haired playmates calling ‘Else, come back’ in the open window was, according to Fontane, decisive in his conception of the novel. After marrying Ardenne Else led a not uninteresting life and presided over a lively salon in Benrath Castle on the Rhine, where she met and fell in love with Emil Hartwich, an unhappily married district judge and amateur painter. In 1886 they planned to marry, but Ardenne forced open Else’s box of letters from Hartwich, challenged his rival and killed him in a duel. The divorce went through the next year and in old age Else still wrote of Hartwich, the lost love of her youth, with vivid recollection and strong feeling. Ardenne was, in accordance with Prussian law, awarded custody of the children, spent a token period in prison for the illegal duel, but was soon pardoned by the Kaiser and pursued a distinguished military career, dying in 1919.

There are crucial differences, some of them surprising, between the facts of the case and Fontane’s fictional treatment of them. The age gap between Effi and her husband becomes twenty-one years. In the social context of the novel this allows Innstetten to have achieved an elevated position in society, albeit at a relatively early age. As Landrat in Kessin he is a senior civil servant with responsibility for a large rural district and so requires a wife as fitting social appendage. Effi with her blue blood suits the job description admirably, and it takes no effort of imagination on Innstetten’s part to find her. He simply returns to his home ground and seeks out the family of the sweetheart of his youth – Effi’s mother. For her part Effi at seventeen is already so conditioned by the expectations of her social sphere that it never crosses her mind to object to this marriage of convenience which mirrors her own parents’ union. In contrast to most English novels of the period money plays no part in the arrangement. The prerequisites are status and background.

There are psychological, sexual and political dimensions to the age difference too, and the mismatch between Effi and Innstetten is partly a function of the wide gap in their educational experience. Their relationship can be seen as symbolizing the conflict between nature and culture. Effi is associated from the outset with fresh air, plants and water, playing games in the garden. Her own associations with the classroom are of exotic tales of fallen women and other improper anecdotes from the geography lesson, and much later she tells her studious daughter that mythology was her favourite subject. This is all a world apart from her husband with his law degree, plodding pedantically through the churches and art galleries of Italy on their honeymoon and taking notes for conjugal culture sessions during the long winter evenings in Kessin.