Kurt Tucholsky Museum Tour

“That you are reading Fontanes ‚Wanderungen’ is touching. By the way it is with him – cum grano salis – as it is with Joethen (Goethe): You can’t really find him in his works. You have him pure in his later poetry; in all his letters, in ‘Causerien über das Theater’ and in his autobiographies. Having read this, you will know why his picture hangs in my room.”

…wrote Tucholsky in March 1935 to his Swiss friend Hedwig Müller. As the library ticket from the Royal Library proves, he was interested early in the poet and admired him for the rest of his life.

1919 he wrote in an essay on the occasion of Fontane’s 100. birthday:

“Old Fontane did not die on September 20, 1898. He died on August 1, 1914.”

On this day the first Wold War began. For Tucholsky Fontane stood in for everything that perished in this war: the old middle-class Europe; its tactfulness, its refinement, its humanity.

He also loved Fontane for his subtle ironic observations. Shortly before his suicide he cited Fontanes poem ‘Summa Summarum’ in his ‘Sudelbuch’ He felt that its ironic message fit his own desperate situation:

(“Lirum larum Löffelstiel / Alles in allem: Es war nicht viel.”)

“Blit Blot Colorspot / altogether: it wasn’t a lot“