The Blue Angel
by Heinrich Mann | 
Anton Reiser
by Karl Philipp Moritz |
Elective Affinities
by Johann Wolfgang Goethe | 
Pigeons on the Grass
by Wolfgang Koeppen | 
The Hothouse
by Wolfgang Koeppen | 
The German Lesson
by Siegfried Lenz | 
Effi Briest
by Theodor Fontane | 
Man of Straw
by Heinrich Mann |
Death in Rome
by Wolfgang Koeppen | 
The Case of Sergeant Grischa
by Arnold Zweig | 
Green Henry
by Gottfried Keller | 
The Guiltless
by Hermann Broch | 
Women in a River Landscape
by Heinrich Boll | 
Billiards at Half-Past Nine
by Heinrich Boll |
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
by Johann Wolfgang Goethe |
Theodor Fontane (1819-98), widely regarded as Germany's most significant novelist between Goethe and Thomas Mann, pioneered the German novel of manners and upper-class society, following a trend in European fiction of the period. The Stechlin is Fontane's last book and his political testament. Like Effi Briest, his great work on the place of women in Bismarck's empire, it is set at the apex of the Wilhelmine era, both in Berlin and on the estate of a Prussian Junker on the shores of Lake Stechlin. It is a significant historical and cultural document, probably the finest chronicle of the lifestyle of the German upper classes in the late nineteenth century; Fontane portrays the best in the life and ways of the passing Prussian aristocracy, while describing his hopes for the future of Germany and its nobility, which were never to be fully realized. Although this novel has been translated into many languages, it has never before been available in English; this edition thus fills an important gap in the significant works of European literature accessible to English readers.