Page 30: ‘In Padua he lies buried’. Goethe, Faust Part I, line 2925. Mephisto’s wily words to Frau Marthe Schwerdtlein about her husband.
Page 31: St Privat panorama. This cylindrical panoramic painting by Emil Hünten of one of the decisive moments of the Franco-Prussian War, the storming of St Privat near Metz on August 18th, 1870, was displayed under the title Nationalpanorama in Herwarthstrasse from 1881. Sound and light effects and models in the foreground were added to give the spectator the impression of actually being present at the action.
Page 31: ten miles. The German Meile which Fontane uses was 7.5 kilometres, that is about 5 miles. All distances in the novel have been converted accordingly.
Page 32: Varzin. Village in the Prussian administrative District of Köslin (now Koszalin in Poland) where Bismarck had an estate. He frequently stayed there up to his dismissal in 1890 by the young Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Page 32: starost. ‘Elder’ (Polish). In Poland, a nobleman who had been given estates by the crown and generally had reponsibilty for judicial matters in the local community.
Page 34: Christian Julius de Meza (1792-1865), commander of the Danish troops in the German-Danish War of 1864. He was descended from Portuguese Jews fleeing persecution, who emigrated to Holland.
Page 37: Small and narrow is my hut. Allusion to Friedrich Schiller, Die Braut von Messina (The Bride of Messina), ‘There is space in the smallest hut / For a happy loving couple.’
Page 40: Friedrich Ernst Count von Wrangel (1784-1877), Prussian Field-Marshal from 1856, had a highly distinguished military career in all major Prussian campaigns from 1807 on and in later life was a popular figure in Berlin, known for his caustic wit.
Page 42: black and white with a little red at best. The Prussian colours (black and white) were preferred to the German national flag (black, white and red).
Page 44: president of the high court. Gerichtspräsident, senior judge at a higher court.
Page 45: district judge. Amtsrichter, judge in a small locality who sat at the Amts-gericht, the first judicial instance.
Page 46: attack on Rathenow. As a prelude to the Battle of Fehrbellin, General Doerfflinger liberated Rathenow from Swedish occupation on June 25th, 1675. See note topage 6.
Page 46: Fehrbellin. Famous victory won on June 28th, 1675 by the Great Elector over the Swedes. It was considered decisive in freeing Brandenburg from the territorial ambitions of Sweden. Froben. The master of horse Emanuel von Froben is credited with saving the Elector’s life by exchanging his horse for the Elector’s conspicuous white charger in the course of the battle. Froben was then killed.
Page 48: conqueror of Saarbrücken. On August 2nd, 1870 Saarbrücken was taken, temporarily, by the French in the first skirmish of the Franco-Prussian War.
Page 48: Jewish banker. Baron Alfons de Rothschild (1827-1905).
Page 48: Karl Eduard Nobiling. Anarchist whose unsuccessful assassination attempt on Kaiser Wilhelm I on June 2nd, 1878 served Bismarck as justification for his measures against the Socialists.
Page 51: ‘White Lady’. Ghostly apparition said to haunt various Hohenzollern castles, warning of imminent disaster. According to legend the widowed Countess Agnes of Orlamünde in the late thirteenth century murdered her children to be able to marry Albrecht von Nürnberg, an ancestor of the Hohenzollerns.
Page 67: Orpheus, Kriemhild, Vestal Virgin. Operatic roles for female voice, from Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice (1762), Heinrich Ludwig Dorn’s Die Nibelungen (1854) and Gasparo Spontini’s The Vestal Virgin (1807). The discarded pieces are Erl-King, Schubert (or possibly Löwe’s) setting of Goethe’s poem; Mill-stream…, from Schubert’s song cycle Die schöne Müllerin, setting poems by Wilhelm Müller; The Bells of Speyer, Löwe’s setting of Maximilian von Oer’s ballad. Miss Tripelli performs Sir Olaf, a poem by Heinrich Heine which Fontane has apparently confused with Löwe’s setting of Herr Oluf from the folksong anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn; and other dramatic pieces concluding with Friedrich Hebbel’s ballad Der Heideknabe (The Boy on the Heath) in a setting by Schumann (1853) for declamation and piano.
Page 68: business of the spirit writing. In mid-nineteenth-century Germany the psychograph, an instrument used at séances for automatic writing of messages purporting to come from the spirit world, was an object of widespread interest.
Page 75: Eugen Richter. Liberal politician, opponent of Bismarck in the Reichstag (1838-1908).
Page 76: Landwehr. Territorial reserve commanded by either former or still active officers.
Page 76: Wilms. Robert Friedrich Wilms (1824-80), Berlin surgeon, personally known to Fontane.
Page 77: Count Gröben. Prussian major-general in the Franco-Prussian War (1817-94).
Page 77: Swedish Pomerania. The only part of Lower Pomerania to remain in Swedish hands after the Peace of Stockholm (1720); Prussian from 1815.
Page 77: Breitling. The estuary of the Warnow. Fontane has combined elements from the Warnow at Warnemünde and the river mouth at Swinemünde in his descriptions of the scenery round the fictitious river Kessine.
Page 77: Registrar. The lowest rank of the civil service.
Page 79: Biliner water. Mineral water from the Bohemian spa Bilin.
Page 79: Visby. Old Hanseatic town on the Swedish island of Gothland. It became Swedish in 1648.
Page 79: Jürgen Wullenweber (1492-1537), mayor of Lübeck who tried unsuccessfully to defend the Hanseatic League and Protestantism against the Bishop of Bremen.
Page 79: Stockholm Bloodbath. In 1520 King Christian II of Denmark ordered the execution of 600 Swedes who had taken part in an uprising against Danish rule.
Page 82: Eichsfeld. Catholic enclave south-west of the Harz mountains.
Page 83: ‘Reeperbahn’. North German: a long, sheltered area where rope was twisted.
Page 84: Königgrätz. Decisive Prussian victory over the Austrians on July 3rd, 1866. Also referred to as the Battle of Sadowa in English.
Page 85: Assessor. Higher civil service post.
Page 85: exact words from the Bible. Revelation iii.16: ‘So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.’
Page 85: Rock of St Peter… Rocher de Bronze. The Catholic Church, an allusion to Jesus’s words in Matthew xvi. 18 by reference to which the papal succession goes back to Peter. The ‘bronze rock’ of Prussia is Bismarck.
Page 85: Justizrat. Title granted to a respected lawyer without a civil service post.
Page 91: Vionville. Prussian victory over the French near Metz on August 16th, 1870.
Page 92: ‘War in Peace’, ‘Monsieur Hercules’, Wilbrandt’s ‘Young Love’… Gensichen’s ‘Euphrosyne’. Krieg im Frieden (1881), comedy by Gustav von Moser and Franz von Schöntan; Monsieur Herkules (1863), farce by Georg Friedrich Belly; Jugendliebe (1871), comedy by Adolf Wilbrandt; Euphrosyne (1877), play by Otto Franz Gensichen on the subject of Goethe’s love for the actress Christiane Neumann-Becker who died young.
Page 92: Castalian Spring. Spring on Mount Parnassus at Delphi to which powers of poetic inspiration have been attributed since the nymph Castalia, according to legend, threw herself into it to escape the pursuit of Apollo.
Page 95: opera. Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera The Prophet (1849), whose hero is the Dutch Anabaptist Jan Bochold von Leyden (1509-36).
Page 97: Johann Bernard Basedow (1723-90) and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827) were among the most famous educationists of their time.
Page 97: Schnepfenthal, Bunzlau. Christian educational institutions in Thüringen and Silesia respectively, the latter referring to the pietistical Herrnhuter community at Gnadenfrei.
Page 97: cherub with the sword. According to Genesis iii.24 God placed ‘Cheru-bims, and a flaming sword’ to guard the garden of Eden after the expulsion of Adam and Eve.
Page 100: Vineta. According to legend the sunken town lies at the bottom of the sea off the Baltic island of Usedom.
Page 100: Heine’s poem. Heine base
d his poem Seegespenst (Sea Spectre, 1827), of which Crampas gives a slightly distorted account, on the Vineta legend.
Page 100: ‘You have diamonds’, ‘Fingers soft…’. First lines of poems from Heine’s collection Buch der Lieder (1827). The word ‘soft’ has been added by Crampas.
Page 101: ‘The giver, not the gift…’. In the original Crampas’s punning reply, literally translated, is: ‘A basket lid is not a basket’, which plays on the German idiom jemandem einen Korb geben (‘to give someone a basket’) meaning ‘to turn someone down’.
Page 102: companion piece. Heine’s poem Spanische Atriden in the collection Romanzero, Book 2.
Page 102: Elizabeth’s mother. Anne Boleyn. Hulda is embarrassed because the name sounds like the German for ‘mistress’, Buhle.
Page 102: Order of the Black Eagle, Pour le Mérite. Prestigious Prussian decorations, the first introduced by Friederich I on his coronation in 1701, the second by Frederick the Great on his accession to the throne in 1740.
Page 103: Josephine factory. Glass factory near Schreiberhau in the Giant Mountains, Silesia.
Page 103: King of Ultima Thule. In Goethe’s ballad Der König von Thule the king is given a goblet by his ‘mistress’ (Buhle = rhyming appendage) as she dies.
Page 104: Friedrichsruh. A property of Bismarck’s near Hamburg, purchased with largesse from the Kaiser on the founding of the Empire in 1871.
Page 105: ‘Buhküken von Halberstadt’. Nursery rhyme about the eleventh-century Bishop Burkhard II of Halberstadt, in the Harz region, who was kind to children.
Page 105: One False Step… Arthur von Schmettwitz. Arthur is the husband of the heroine Ella – Effi’s role – in Ernst Wichert’s romantic comedy Ein Schritt vom Wege (1872). In this piece about mistaken identity the young aristocratic couple face an awkward situation in a spa hotel when Arthur loses his money and papers and receives a bill for a champagne breakfast. Ella is disguised as ‘Signora Carlina’, a famous singer from Milan, and gives a concert to cover the cash-flow problem. Coincidentally the ruler of the pricipality is rumoured to be travelling incognito with an opera singer. Arthur is then mistaken for the prince and his wife for the lady of dubious respectability, while the real prince is suspected of highway robbery. The plot casts ironic light on social assumptions and the importance of appearances. This is another of Fontane’s subtle strategies for presenting his characters in shifting constellations to explore hidden aspects of their lives and aspirations and reflect on the relativity and superficiality of social values. The dramatist Wichert held a high position in the judiciary.
Page 106: Kammergerichtsrat… Königsberg. Ironic allusion to the fact that Wichert, writer of comic plays, was both highly placed in the Prussian judiciary and came from the home town of Immanuel Kant, who developed the idea of the ‘categorical imperative’ based on the concept of duty.
Page 106: Seven beauties… Hans Sachs. Allusion to Boccaccio, via Hans Sachs’s version. In Boccaccio’s story Ameto there are seven beautiful nymphs symbolizing the Seven Virtues. By jumping into the water with the nymphs the simple youth Ameto acquires their virtues. Innstetten’s remark reflects a curious combination of morality and eroticism.
Page 109: Schleswig under Wrangel and Bonin. The uprising of Schleswig-Holstein against the Danish threat of annexation in 1848 was supported by Prussia in a campaign led by Wrangel (see note topage 40) and General Eduard von Bonin.
Page 109: the storming of the Danewerk. The old Danish frontier wall was taken by a successful Prussian attack during the Battle of Schleswig on April 23rd, 1848.
Page 111: Teutonic Knights in Marienburg. The seat of the semi-religious order founded during the crusades was transferred in 1308 from Acre to Marienburg Castle in West Prussia (now Malbork in Poland). Its banqueting hall has a fine vaulted ceiling.
Page 111: Oliva Abbey. Cistercian Abbey near Danzig.
Page 111: Joachim Nettelbeck (1738-1824). Exemplary Prussian patriot; as mayor, together with Major Schill and the town commandant Neithard von Gneisenau, he led the successful defence of Kolberg against Napoleonic troops in 1807.
Page 112: legendary king. Sigurd Ring appears in Frithiofs Saga, a Swedish epic poem (1825) by Esaias Tegnér based on an old Norse saga.
Page 112: Köslin. Town in Eastern Pomerania near the Baltic coast (now Koszalin in Poland).
Page 113: ‘three rings’. Allusion to the parable of the rings in Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise, 1779), Lessing’s play about religious tolerance. The rings stand for the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths.
Page 116: Lake Gothen. Lies between Gothen and Heringsdorf on the island of Usedom.
Page 120: Radegast and Swantowit. Slav deities: Radigast – god of reason and mental powers; Swatowit – the holy or bright conqueror.
Page 121: Luther… Table Talk. Johann Aurifaber’s sixteenth-century edition of conversations recorded at Martin Luther’s table by students and friends was regarded as edifying reading in Protestant households in Germany.
Page 131: Dressel’s. Exclusive restaurant on Unter den Linden.
Page 132: Ministerialrat. Head of a section within a Prussian ministry department.
Page 135: Friesack. Town in the District of Potsdam where Fontane has located Hohen-Cremmen.
Page 140: Tiergarten. Extensive park from which the elegant district of Berlin just to the west of the centre takes its name.
Page 141: Kladderadatsch. Satirical Berlin weekly: two lieutenants, Strudelwit and Prudelwit, and Charlie Miessnick, a schoolboy, were recurrent characters in it. At first leftwing, it later supported Bismarck.
Page 142: Wee Wippy from Bernau. Character in the Berlin satirical paper Berliner Wespen (Berlin Wasps). Wippchen produced humorous reports of the Russo-Turkish War (1877/78) direct from Bernau on the outskirts of Berlin.
Page 142: plovers’ eggs. A favourite dish of Bismarck’s.
Page 143: bad joke. In the original, the answer, translated literally, to Dagobert’s punning riddle is: ‘No more sorrow shall befall you’, and is taken from the Book of Job.
Page 143: Geheimrat. Privy Councillor, a purely honorary title.
Page 145: Willibald Alexis. Historical novelist (1798-1871). Die Hosen des Herrn von Bredow (Baron Bredow’s Breeches, 1846) is his most popular work.
Page 145: Rummschüttel. The name is slightly comical and suggests ‘to shake about’.
Page 149: ‘A little lamb white as snow’. Line from ‘Das Lämmchen’, a nursery rhyme by Friedrich Julius Bertuch (1747-1822).
Page 150: Helm’s… Red Castle… Hiller’s. Helm’s and Hiller’s were exclusive restaurants and the Red Castle was the nickname for commercial premises with an imposing redbrick façade on the Schlossplatz.
Page 150: Chancellor’s Palace. Innstetten signs the book laid out for birthday congratulations to Bismarck on April 1st in the Imperial Chancellor’s Palace on Wilhelmstrasse.
Page 151: Charlottenburg Palace. The Royal Palace a few miles to the west of the city centre was built in the eighteenth century as a summer residence for the Prussian King.
Page 151: Belvedere. Pavilion in Charlottenburg Palace park where the medium Johann Rudolf Bischoffswerder, a favourite of Friedrich Wilhelm II (1744-97), conducted séances.
Page 152: Grosser Stern. A large roundabout in the Tiergarten on the axis joining the Royal Palace to Charlottenburg Palace.
Page 152: Rügen: Island on the Baltic coast, a popular holiday destination.
Page 152: Major Ferdinand von Schill (1776-1809). Commander of a regiment of Prussian Hussars who led the struggle to liberate Prussia from Napoleon, and fell at Stralsund on the Baltic in the attempt.
Page 152: Scheele. Karl Wilhelm Scheele (1742-86).
Page 154: goddess Hertha. Nerthus or Hertha, goddess of the earth and fertility, worshipped by Germanic tribes round the Baltic and the North Sea. There is no evidence that the cult of Nerthus ever existed on Rügen. Lake Hertha lies north of Sassnitz.
Page 159: The Storming
… Heights of Lipa. Scenes of Prussian victories. The storming of the Heights of Düppel north-east of Flensburg was decisive in the German-Danish War of 1864, when Schleswig-Holstein was in dispute. The other picture is a scene from the Battle of Königgrätz; see note topage 84.
Page 161: Rat. Literally ‘Councillor’, a person of some considerable social standing with the title Rat, which may be honorary as in the case of Geheimrat, or may designate professional status as in Landgerichtsrat.
Page 162: Landgerichtsrat. Judge at a regional court of law.
Page 163: Almanach de Gotha. Genealogical handbook of the German nobility.
Page 165: Geheimrätin. The wife, or as in this case widow, of a Geheimrat. See note topage 143. In Germany the male title is not only acquired in feminine form by the wife (e.g. Frau Professor) but can also be retained together with its prestige after the husband’s death.
Page 165: ‘on the appointed hour’s stroke’. Quotation from Schiller, Piccolomini, I, iv, line 528: ‘the task upon the appointed hour’s stroke.’
Page 169: lead-water. A dilute solution of acetic lead applied to relieve swellings, bruising and abrasions.
Page 180: Fremdenblatt… Kleines Journal. Berlin newspapers. The latter specialized in society and court news.
Page 183: Niemann’s Tannhäuser. Albert Niemann (1831-1917), heroic tenor, celebrated Wagnerian at the Berlin Opera from 1866.
Page 185: Saatwinkel… Pichelsberg… Pichelsdorf… Pichelswerder. All popular places with Berlin daytrippers, lying to the north-west of the city by the river Havel. Picheln means ‘to booze’.
Page 185: Kiekebusch, Wuhlheide. More of the same but to the south. Kiekebusch suggests ‘peeking in the bushes’; Wuhlheide, ‘rummaging and burrowing in the heath’. Places where upper-class men might take their mistresses on outings away from the public gaze. In Fontane’s novel Confusions, Delusions chapter 13 there is a celebrated description of such an excursion, to Hankels Ablage.
Page 189: Gretchen look. Ironic allusion to the innocence of Gretchen in Faust Part I.
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