Relatedly, of course it makes sense to check the background of biographers for how it may influence their attitude re: Fritz, boyfriends and politics, FW and parent issues. Here's me providing you with one for Theodor Fontane.
Attitude towards parents and parental authority in general:
Complicated. His father and mother married young and regretted it for the ensuing decades. Dad was Henri Louis Fontane, lover of anecdotes, fun and games, inveterate gambler and thus cause of bankruptcy and worries; the fun parent. Mum was Emilie Labry (yup, both of Fontane's parents have French names; Fritz' great grandfather had invited all those Huguenots Louis XIV had kicked out into Prussia, which benefited the principality a great deal and meant there was an important minority of French speakers around), often mortally embarrassed by her husband making a fool of himself socially even before he gambled away the family money (again) and fond of physical punishment; the discipline parent. As a boy, Theo resented her for it. Later, he came to respect her and see her difficult situation, but he still thought beating your kid was a lousy form of education and didn't do it with his own.
Attitude towards Prussia: Complicated. "the beloved and hated Prussia", is how he phrases it at one point. Young Theo, influenced both by Dad's enthusiasm for Napoleon and his own political ideas, took part in the 1848 revolution and even wrote an essay titled "Why Prussia must perish", by which he meant that the Prussian state was so codified as a military and authoritarian state by now that in order to achieve a unified Germany with the other German states, it would have to be either so thoroughly reformed that it wouldn't be Prussia anymore or get dissolved into a larger Germany. Then the 1848 revolution was defeated. Theo's mother: Told you so. Now you're out of job. And you've got a new wife and your first kid. If you don't want to end up like your father, you better take the job at this arch-conservative ultra Prussian journal I've asked my local preacher to get you! Theo: swallows, takes job. Writes, among other things, the basics for what would become "Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg", aka the book the Katte tragedy excerpt is from, for this very conservative journal. Later, once he had achieved some name recognition, switches to another, moderate journal. (Fontane didn't make it big time as a novelist until he was well into his 60s.) Once he finally achieved fame and very late fortune in his 70s, he amazed and delighted the younger writers by supporting the aventgarde theatre of his day instead of putting down new stuff, and politically arguing for reform again.
Like his father, he loved anecdotal historical ramblings (he'd be a great contributer to this journal, too), and he'd always enjoyed stories about Prussian nobles and kings, it wasn't that he suddenly discovered them post revolution. But his favourites among the Hohenzollern were not so coincidentally the ones who never got on the throne (i.e. Fritz' brother Heinrich, but also nephew Louis Ferdinand).
In terms of contemporary (i.e. contemporary to his lifetime) Prussian society, Fontane still is regarded as THE realist novelist, depicting said society from the inside with a mixture of affection and acid observation of its flaws.
Attitude towards sex in general and m/m in particular: as a person, had two (early dead) pre-marital illegitimate kids. His wife Emilie (another one, bearing the same first name as his mother just to confuse casual biographers) has been an illegitimate daughter herself (with a horror childhood; she got adopted, then her adopted mother died, and her adopted father took up with a prostitute who tied little Emilie to a post in the courtyard while servicing soldiers in her rooms). As a writer, Fontane was famous for his three dimensional female characters, several of whom have non-marital sex. So much for the het side of things. Re: m/m, he had a bff called Wilhelm Wolfssohn who wrote him a love poem when they were young and passionate letters with "I am your Carlos, you are my Posa" etc. (that definitely was a 19th century passionate friendship), but fictionally speaking, there's not much reflection of that. There's no intense male friendship in a Fontane novel that I can think of (there are of course male friendships, but as a writer Fontane genuinely seems to have been more interested in exploring female characters and the way they relate to men and each other).
Is he likely to have projected a contemporary political figure into Fritz? Not into Fritz the crown prince, but Old Fritz the remote shadow in Schach von Wuthenow, possibly, to wit: Bismarck. Fontane went to and thro between "magnificent bastard" and "reactionary bastard" on Bismarck through most of his life, ever since they were on opposite sides in the 1848 revolution in their youth.
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Meanwhile, Fontane
Date: 2019-10-07 08:47 am (UTC)Attitude towards parents and parental authority in general:
Complicated. His father and mother married young and regretted it for the ensuing decades. Dad was Henri Louis Fontane, lover of anecdotes, fun and games, inveterate gambler and thus cause of bankruptcy and worries; the fun parent. Mum was Emilie Labry (yup, both of Fontane's parents have French names; Fritz' great grandfather had invited all those Huguenots Louis XIV had kicked out into Prussia, which benefited the principality a great deal and meant there was an important minority of French speakers around), often mortally embarrassed by her husband making a fool of himself socially even before he gambled away the family money (again) and fond of physical punishment; the discipline parent. As a boy, Theo resented her for it. Later, he came to respect her and see her difficult situation, but he still thought beating your kid was a lousy form of education and didn't do it with his own.
Attitude towards Prussia: Complicated. "the beloved and hated Prussia", is how he phrases it at one point. Young Theo, influenced both by Dad's enthusiasm for Napoleon and his own political ideas, took part in the 1848 revolution and even wrote an essay titled "Why Prussia must perish", by which he meant that the Prussian state was so codified as a military and authoritarian state by now that in order to achieve a unified Germany with the other German states, it would have to be either so thoroughly reformed that it wouldn't be Prussia anymore or get dissolved into a larger Germany. Then the 1848 revolution was defeated. Theo's mother: Told you so. Now you're out of job. And you've got a new wife and your first kid. If you don't want to end up like your father, you better take the job at this arch-conservative ultra Prussian journal I've asked my local preacher to get you! Theo: swallows, takes job. Writes, among other things, the basics for what would become "Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg", aka the book the Katte tragedy excerpt is from, for this very conservative journal. Later, once he had achieved some name recognition, switches to another, moderate journal. (Fontane didn't make it big time as a novelist until he was well into his 60s.) Once he finally achieved fame and very late fortune in his 70s, he amazed and delighted the younger writers by supporting the aventgarde theatre of his day instead of putting down new stuff, and politically arguing for reform again.
Like his father, he loved anecdotal historical ramblings (he'd be a great contributer to this journal, too), and he'd always enjoyed stories about Prussian nobles and kings, it wasn't that he suddenly discovered them post revolution. But his favourites among the Hohenzollern were not so coincidentally the ones who never got on the throne (i.e. Fritz' brother Heinrich, but also nephew Louis Ferdinand).
In terms of contemporary (i.e. contemporary to his lifetime) Prussian society, Fontane still is regarded as THE realist novelist, depicting said society from the inside with a mixture of affection and acid observation of its flaws.
Attitude towards sex in general and m/m in particular: as a person, had two (early dead) pre-marital illegitimate kids. His wife Emilie (another one, bearing the same first name as his mother just to confuse casual biographers) has been an illegitimate daughter herself (with a horror childhood; she got adopted, then her adopted mother died, and her adopted father took up with a prostitute who tied little Emilie to a post in the courtyard while servicing soldiers in her rooms). As a writer, Fontane was famous for his three dimensional female characters, several of whom have non-marital sex. So much for the het side of things. Re: m/m, he had a bff called Wilhelm Wolfssohn who wrote him a love poem when they were young and passionate letters with "I am your Carlos, you are my Posa" etc. (that definitely was a 19th century passionate friendship), but fictionally speaking, there's not much reflection of that. There's no intense male friendship in a Fontane novel that I can think of (there are of course male friendships, but as a writer Fontane genuinely seems to have been more interested in exploring female characters and the way they relate to men and each other).
Is he likely to have projected a contemporary political figure into Fritz? Not into Fritz the crown prince, but Old Fritz the remote shadow in Schach von Wuthenow, possibly, to wit: Bismarck. Fontane went to and thro between "magnificent bastard" and "reactionary bastard" on Bismarck through most of his life, ever since they were on opposite sides in the 1848 revolution in their youth.