Theodor Fontane’s Effi Briest

The year 2019 marks the bicentennial of Theodor Fontane’s birth. The works of the German author have withstood the passing of time, and indeed his books have kept themselves free of dust. Effi Briest is certainly one of his masterpieces. It narrates the story of a lively woman who, at the age of seventeen, finds herself married to a man twice her age. This discrepancy is amplified by an additional strong difference in personality and taste, for the open-minded Effi is married to Baron Geert von Innstetten, a Prussian public servant working in Prince Bismarck’s bureaucracy. Fontane describes with precision the married life of these two characters, who never truly become a couple. Effi remains caught up in her own world—“Poor Effi, you gazed up at the wonders of the heavens for too long” (p. 215)—and Innstetten in his, always focused on progressing in his career. He overlooks the trepidations that keep Effi on edge, particularly when they live in Kessin, an isolated place where the winters are hard and long. It is during this time that Effi has an affair with one of her husband’s friends, to kill the ennui caused by the people and place. A move to Berlin reinvigorates the two, and under the influence of urban society they increasingly embody a content couple. But when Innstetten, six years later, discovers several letters revealing her affair his sense of honour blinds him to the reality of their present life. Innstetten kills his former friend in a duel, divorces Effi, and takes their daughter Annie away from her. Abandoned by everybody, Effi becomes increasingly ill, and dies in the certainty that they could have been happy. There is not much of what Fontane calls “the milk of human kindness” (p. 198) in Effi Briest.

Fontane depicts Innstetten’s inability to free himself from the weight of social conventions, that “social something that tyrannizes us” (p. 173). But Innstetten also learns a hard lesson since his revenge brings no peace to him, only remorse and the longing for the good life: “sleeping well and having boots that don’t pinch” (p. 210), having a sense of “the small things of life, the smallest of all…. the violets in bloom, or the flowers coming out round Luise Momument” (p. 212). These are great passages that highlight an important idea that Fontane shares with us today, namely that “you can’t get through life without auxiliary structures” (p. 212), Hilfskonstruktionen.

Effi learns a lesson too, she understands and forgives Innstetten. “There was a lot of good in his nature, and he was as noble as anyone can be who lacks the real capacity for love” (p. 216). Effi’s parents’ remorse for her stolen youth concludes the story, but there is no explanation for what has happened, since as the father declares, “that’s too vast a subject” (p. 217).

*All citations from the translation by Hugh Rorrison and Helen Chambers for the Penguin Books Edition of 2000.

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