Christian Friedrich Scherenberg and literary Berlin from 1840 to 1860

The font Christian Friedrich Scherenberg and the literary Berlin from 1840 to 1860 by Theodor Fontane was created from autumn 1882 to early summer 1884 and appeared from June 26 to July 19, 1884 as a preprint in the Vossische Zeitung and at the end of 1884 by Verlag Wilhelm Hertz in Berlin.

In this essay in 25 chapters, Fontane tries to pay tribute to the poet Christian Friedrich Scherenberg , who for many years played a central role in the poets' association Tunnel over the Spree , which was of great importance for Fontane's literary beginnings. Since he knew that Scherenberg's writings would no longer meet his own critical judgment, he deliberately limited himself to his judgment from the time of his first meeting with the poet and refrained from reading them again before completing the essay . The text has strong autobiographical traits over large stretches and some passages were taken over literally in Fontane's depiction of the tunnel over the Spree in his autobiographical work From Twenty to Thirty .

While Fontane's own account focuses on the person of Scherenberg, for the appreciation of his work he largely falls back on external judgments, for which he consults letters to Scherenberg in great detail. In addition, he gives quite detailed characteristics of the friends and supporters of Scherenberg, which are based on representations of their companions. He goes into detail about Christian Adolf Friedrich Widmann and Heinrich von Orelli , but also highlights the later Prussian Minister of Justice Heinrich Friedberg and the court actor Louis Schneider as important sponsors and describes his relationship with Ferdinand Lassalle .

The fact that this typeface remained relatively undeveloped due to Fontane's inner distance to the earlier “tunnel darling” allows a look at his working method: extensive research and quite precise orientation to the sources, which only in the phase of elaboration in the “lazy tone” of Fontane's narrative style is remelted and supplemented by often very pronounced judgments.