Berliner Adressen

The mapping of Berlin after 1871 received new currency when Berlin was declared the capital of reunited Germany in 1991, with Fontane becoming the literary figurehead of the new 'Berlin Republic.' Largely shaped by Fontane, the Berlin novel between 1885 and 1906 uses exact addresses on the citymap to mark a social movement from East to West. A comparison of Fontane and lesser known authors of his time (Paul Lindau, Max Kretzer and 'the Jewish Fontane' Georg Hermann) reveals that the now proverbial "Mauer im Kopf" (wall of the mind), between the more bourgeois Western part and the more proletarian Eastern part, existed already one-hundred years earlier.