Der Stechlin: Roman Theodor Fontane - In Fontanes letztem Roman ist die Dramatik der Gegensätze gemildert. Es gilt der Satz, daß "unsre Prüfungen auch unsre Segnungen sind". Die sich da zu vertrauter Runde auf Schloß Stechlin zusammenfinden, wissen um die Gefahren seelischer und geistiger Erstarrung. Allen voran der liebenswürdige Schloßherr, aber auch sein Sohn Woldemar, die geheimnisvolle Gräfin Melusine und deren stille Schwester Armgard, sie alle sind davon überzeugt: Wer Zukunft gewinnen will, muß aus der Enge heraus. In diesem Sinne ist der verträumte Stechlinsee ihr bewundertes Vorbild, hat er doch Fühlung mit der großen Welt. Wenn es in fernen Ländern rumort, dann regt es sich auch in ihm, ein Wasserstrahl steigt empor, und zuweilen zeigt sich ein roter Hahn, der laut ins märkische Land hineinruft.Der sagenumwobene märkische Stechlinsee ist der große Mitakteur in Fontanes letztem Roman, einem der schönsten Bekenntnisbücher der deutschen Literatur. Erneuerung durch Weltoffenheit ist seine Botschaft, die von denen vernommen wird, die sich in dem alten reizvollen Herrenhaus zu amüsanten Plauderstunden zusammenfinden."Hohe, heitere und wehe, das Menschliche auf eine nie vernommene, entzückende Art umspielende Lebensmusik sind diese Plaudereien" (Thomas Mann).

Theodor Fontane, novelist, critic, poet, and travel writer, was one of the most celebrated nineteenth-century German men of letters. He was born into a French Huguenot family in the Prussian town of Neuruppin, where his father owned a small pharmacy. His fathers gambling debts forced the family to move repeatedly, and eventually his temperamentally mismatched parents separated. Though Fontane showed early interest in history and literaturejotting down stories in his school notebookshe could not afford to attend university; instead he apprenticed as a pharmacist and eventually settled in Berlin. There he joined the influential literary society Tunnel über der Spree, which included among its members Theodor Storm and Gottfried Keller, and turned to writing. In 1850 Fontanes first published books, two volumes of ballads, appeared; they would prove to be his most successful books during his lifetime. He spent the next four decades working as a critic, journalist, and war correspondent while producing some fifty works of history, travel narrative, and fiction. His early novels, the first of which was published in 1878, when Fontane was nearly sixty, concerned recent historical events. It was not until the late 1880s that he turned to his great novels of modern society, remarkable for their psychological insight: Trials and Tribulations (1888), Irretrievable (1891), Frau Jenny Treibel (1892), and Effi Briest (1895). During his last years, Fontane returned to writing poetry, and, while recovering from a severe illness, wrote an autobiographical novel that would prove to be a late commercial success. He is buried in the French section of the Friedhof II cemetery in Berlin.