Theodor Fontane manuscripts restored

Berlin's museum foundation has marked the upcoming 200th anniversary of Theodor Fontane's birth in 2019 by announcing the meticulous restoration of 7,000 of his handwritten pages.

Fontane, whose works include Before the Storm, L'Adultera, Walks through the Province of Brandenburg and society novel Effi Briest, often wrote in black ink on paper. He frequently corrected his passages in blue and red ink, or pencil, sometimes gluing notes as corrections on the edges of his manuscripts.

His papers, which had become severely porous, had been stabilized and cleaned over the last four years, said the foundation, giving researchers a first-ever chance to study pasted-over texts and the reverse sides of his attached notes.

The works would be digitized and made freely accessible online, said the foundation, which spans five Berlin repositories, including the city's Märkisches Museum.

Funding for the restoration project, totaling €180,000 ($205,000), was provided by the federal government, the city-state of Berlin and the foundation itself.

Correspondent and novelist

Fontane was born on December 30, 1819 in Neuruppin, a garrison town northwest of Berlin, in what is now Germany's regional state of Brandenburg.

Its regional capital Potsdam also houses an estimated 20,000 Fontane documents, including his letters, in the Theodor-Fontane-Archiv.

Like his father, he first apprenticed as a pharmacist before turning to literature in 1839. He moved to Berlin in 1845, making contact with other literary figures such as Theodor Storm.

Fontane's initial works include a 1843 translation of Shakespeare's Hamlet into German and travel articles written during various stints as a newspaper correspondent across Europe.

His 1896 epic Effi Briest, a society novel about a 17-year-old girl being persuaded by her mother to marry a baron twice her age, was made into a film five times, including a 1968 version in the former communist East Germany.

ipj/cmk (epd, dpa)