Effi Briest
Encyclopedia
Effi Briest is widely considered to be Theodor Fontane
’s masterpiece and one of the most famous German
realist
novel
s of all time. Thomas Mann
once said that if one had to reduce one’s library
to six novels, Effi Briest would have to be one of them. Published from 1894
to 1895
as a serial novel in the Deutsche Rundschau, a German magazine, it was first published in book form in 1896
. The novel marks a watershed and climax at once in the poetic realism of literature and forms a thematic trilogy on marriage
in the nineteenth century from the female point of view along with the more famous Anna Karenina
and Madame Bovary
. All three are adultery
tragedies.
. At the age of seventeen, she is married off to Baron Geert von Innstetten, a 38-year-old aristocrat who years ago had courted her mother Luise and been turned down because of his insufficient social position, which he has in the meantime ameliorated.
town of Kessin
, where she ends up in the throes of an emotional crisis. Her husband is away for weeks at a time and leaves her to her own devices in their home. Alienated from the local aristocracy and therefore miserably unhappy, Effi finds but one companion in the whole town.
She suspects that their house may be haunted. Innstetten reassures her, but, perhaps on purpose, does not completely lay her fears to rest. When she voices her disquiet about the possible presence of a ghost, her husband angrily responds that her fears are insignificant when compared with the importance of his political career. His reply shows his worry that people may learn about Effi’s discomfort and subsequently censure them publicly.
The mercurial and debonair Major Crampas finally announces his arrival in Kessin, and although he is married and notorious for his overt womanising, Effi cannot help but rejoice in the attention he shows to her. As the reader is only delicately told, a full extramarital relationship is consummated. Despite this, later in the novel Effi is relieved to move to Berlin, away from Crampas, and expresses shame at her adultery, although she also expresses shame at not feeling guilty enough. Innstetten, however, inwardly scorns Crampas and perceives him as a lecherous womanizer with a cavalier attitude to the laws, whereas Crampas is persuaded that Innstetten has a habit of educating and "edifying" his fellows in a slightly patronising way.
Years later, Effi’s young daughter Annie is growing up and the family has relocated to Berlin
as Innstetten has ascended the political hierarchy. All things appear to have turned out well for Effi. However, Instetten discovers her old correspondence with Crampas, and learns that his wife had become enamored of Crampas while they were living in Kessin. Innstetten challenges Crampas to a duel
. Crampas agrees to the plan and is killed by Innstetten.
Innstetten resolves to divorce
Effi immediately. He is given custody of their daughter, in whom he successfully develops a feeling of disdain for her mother. Indeed, when Effi and Annie arrange a brief encounter a couple years later, the tense atmosphere which dominates the reunion shows that they have grown further apart. In the aftermath of this meeting, Effi ceases to make any more endeavors to strike up an untroubled relationship with her daughter.
Forlorn and disowned by her fellows, Effi adjusts to a reclusive life and suffers from ostracism for years, during which she plumbs the depths of despair. Since public opprobrium has been heaped upon her, her parents refuse to take her back, believing that it is not right for them to accept her in the midst of their family. (According to the prevailing values of the late nineteenth century, one's reputation would be besmirched by the acquaintance of someone whose marriage was annulled because of their own adultery.)
In the meantime, Innstetten has second thoughts about his action. He finally has to acknowledge that the brighter days of his marriage are long past: he does not even delight in his gradual ascent within the country’s political hierarchy.
Effi is eventually taken in by her parents, and temporarily seems to recover from the nervous disorder she has come down with. Her recovery is nonetheless temporary, as feelings of sorrow and repentance are deeply embedded in her soul. Shortly before she passes away, she summons her mother and pleads with her to inform Innstetten about her regrets about her actions, with which she has been bedevilled over the course of her declining years. The novel closes with Effi dying serenely at the parental estate of Hohen-Cremmen, in a very symmetrical ending that matches the beginning of the novel. In the novel’s final scene, her parents vaguely realise their responsibility for her intractable hardships, but ultimately they do not dare question the social constructs which caused the tragedy.
Elisabeth von Ardenne was born Elisabeth von Plotho on 26 October 1853, the youngest of five children. Her place of birth, Zerben, is nowadays known as Elbe-Parey
. After her father’s untimely demise in 1864, she led a blissful and tranquil childhood until she made the acquaintance of her future husband, Armand Léon von Ardenne (1848-1919). The adolescent Elisabeth, who had by then received the sobriquet “Else”, is said to have displayed little interest in the young man who was five years her senior, and therefore declined his first proposal of marriage. Nonetheless she had a change of heart during the Franco-Prussian War
, in which Ardenne had been injured. Elisabeth von Plotho and Léon von Ardenne announced their two-year engagement on 7 February 1871. The couple eventually wed on 1 January 1873.
They relocated to Düsseldorf
in the summer of 1881 owing to Ardenne’s ascent within the country’s political hierarchy. In Düsseldorf they struck up a relationship with the judge Emil Hartwich
(1843-1886). Hartwich, who also had an outstanding reputation as a painter, was suffering on account of his unhappy marriage. He and young Elisabeth von Ardenne, who was ten years his junior, turned out to have many things in common, such as their love for the theatre. The correspondence between them did not even cease when Ardenne returned to Berlin on 1 October 1884, with Elisabeth and the couple’s two young children following him.
Hartwich continued to pay sporadic visits to Elisabeth and her husband even after the couple’s departure. While he was sojourning in Berlin during the summer of 1886, he and Elisabeth both resolved to divorce their respective spouses and to marry each other. Ardenne, however, had been secretly harbouring suspicions which were confirmed when he found the letters which his wife and Hartwich had been exchanging over the course of several years. Thereupon he filed for divorce and challenged his rival to a duel
, an event which attracted massive media coverage before it took place on 27 November 1886. Hartwich sustained severe injuries and died four days after the duel on 1 December 1886. Although Armand von Ardenne was initially sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, his prison term was reduced to merely eighteen days not long afterwards.
The von Ardennes’ divorce was finalised on 15 March 1887, with Armand von Ardenne being given full custody of their two children. Over the years following her separation from her husband, Elisabeth von Ardenne consecrated herself to the care of deprived or disabled people. Her name was, albeit temporarily, deleted from her family’s chronicles.
In 1904, Elisabeth’s daughter Margot was the first one to make an endeavour to track down her disowned mother. Her son Egmont encountered her only five years later. Thus Elisabeth von Ardenne reunited with her children after two decades of separation. Her former husband died in 1919 at the age of 71.
Elisabeth von Ardenne died on 4 February 1952 in Lindau
at the age of 98, and was interred in an Ehrengrab
in Berlin. Her grandson was the scientist Manfred von Ardenne
.
Fontane was cognisant of the fact that Elisabeth von Ardenne did not retreat into her privacy once her amour had come to light; in contrast to Effi Briest, she took up several jobs and devoted herself to the more disadvantaged. Elisabeth von Ardenne died in 1952 at the age of 98, whereas Effi expires when she is 29.
Additional differences between the fictitious story and the true incidents upon which it is based are the days on which several incidents in Fontane’s novel occur. Effi Briest weds her husband on 3 October, while Elisabeth von Plotho got married on 1 January. The former bears her child on 3 July, whereas neither of Elisabeth’s children was born on that day. Indeed, Margot and Egmont von Ardenne were given birth on 5 November and 4 January respectively. Finally, Elisabeth von Ardenne’s day of birth is 26 October, while Effi Briest is said to celebrate her birthday sometime in August.
It is also taught as part of the German Prelim course at Oxford University.
The novel has exerted a major influence on later German writers, including Thomas Mann's early work Buddenbrooks
.
directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
was released, with Hanna Schygulla
as Effi Briest. Three earlier German versions were made in 1939, 1955 and, for TV, in 1970. In 2009 German production company Constantin Film AG produced the book's fifth film and television incarnation, with European Film actress 2005 winner Julia Jentsch
taking on the title character.
Theodor Fontane
Theodor Fontane was a German novelist and poet, regarded by many as the most important 19th-century German-language realist writer.-Youth:Fontane was born in Neuruppin into a Huguenot family. At the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to an apothecary, his father's profession. He became an...
’s masterpiece and one of the most famous German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
realist
Literary realism
Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s of all time. Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
once said that if one had to reduce one’s library
Library
In a traditional sense, a library is a large collection of books, and can refer to the place in which the collection is housed. Today, the term can refer to any collection, including digital sources, resources, and services...
to six novels, Effi Briest would have to be one of them. Published from 1894
1894 in literature
The year 1894 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:*Robert Frost sells his first poem, "My Butterfly", to The New York Independent for fifteen dollars.*Hermann Hesse begins his apprenticeship at a factory in Calw....
to 1895
1895 in literature
The year 1895 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:* Carlyle's House in Chelsea opens to the public.* Robert Frost marries Elinor Miriam White.* Ernest Thayer recites his poem, Casey at the Bat, at a Harvard class reunion....
as a serial novel in the Deutsche Rundschau, a German magazine, it was first published in book form in 1896
1896 in literature
The year 1896 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:* Final volume of Theodore Roosevelt's The Winning of the West....
. The novel marks a watershed and climax at once in the poetic realism of literature and forms a thematic trilogy on marriage
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
in the nineteenth century from the female point of view along with the more famous Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger...
and Madame Bovary
Madame Bovary
Madame Bovary is Gustave Flaubert's first published novel and is considered his masterpiece. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life...
. All three are adultery
Adultery
Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...
tragedies.
Plot introduction
Effi Briest is the daughter of a nobleman in GermanyGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. At the age of seventeen, she is married off to Baron Geert von Innstetten, a 38-year-old aristocrat who years ago had courted her mother Luise and been turned down because of his insufficient social position, which he has in the meantime ameliorated.
Plot summary
The young, immature and carefree Effi, still practically a child, but attracted by notions of social honour, consents to live in the small BalticBaltic region
The terms Baltic region, Baltic Rim countries, and Baltic Rim refer to slightly different combinations of countries in the general area surrounding the Baltic Sea.- Etymology :...
town of Kessin
Kessin
Kessin is a village and a former municipality in the district of Rostock, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. Since 7 June 2009, it is part of the municipality Dummerstorf....
, where she ends up in the throes of an emotional crisis. Her husband is away for weeks at a time and leaves her to her own devices in their home. Alienated from the local aristocracy and therefore miserably unhappy, Effi finds but one companion in the whole town.
She suspects that their house may be haunted. Innstetten reassures her, but, perhaps on purpose, does not completely lay her fears to rest. When she voices her disquiet about the possible presence of a ghost, her husband angrily responds that her fears are insignificant when compared with the importance of his political career. His reply shows his worry that people may learn about Effi’s discomfort and subsequently censure them publicly.
The mercurial and debonair Major Crampas finally announces his arrival in Kessin, and although he is married and notorious for his overt womanising, Effi cannot help but rejoice in the attention he shows to her. As the reader is only delicately told, a full extramarital relationship is consummated. Despite this, later in the novel Effi is relieved to move to Berlin, away from Crampas, and expresses shame at her adultery, although she also expresses shame at not feeling guilty enough. Innstetten, however, inwardly scorns Crampas and perceives him as a lecherous womanizer with a cavalier attitude to the laws, whereas Crampas is persuaded that Innstetten has a habit of educating and "edifying" his fellows in a slightly patronising way.
Years later, Effi’s young daughter Annie is growing up and the family has relocated to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
as Innstetten has ascended the political hierarchy. All things appear to have turned out well for Effi. However, Instetten discovers her old correspondence with Crampas, and learns that his wife had become enamored of Crampas while they were living in Kessin. Innstetten challenges Crampas to a duel
Duel
A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.Duels in this form were chiefly practised in Early Modern Europe, with precedents in the medieval code of chivalry, and continued into the modern period especially among...
. Crampas agrees to the plan and is killed by Innstetten.
Innstetten resolves to divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...
Effi immediately. He is given custody of their daughter, in whom he successfully develops a feeling of disdain for her mother. Indeed, when Effi and Annie arrange a brief encounter a couple years later, the tense atmosphere which dominates the reunion shows that they have grown further apart. In the aftermath of this meeting, Effi ceases to make any more endeavors to strike up an untroubled relationship with her daughter.
Forlorn and disowned by her fellows, Effi adjusts to a reclusive life and suffers from ostracism for years, during which she plumbs the depths of despair. Since public opprobrium has been heaped upon her, her parents refuse to take her back, believing that it is not right for them to accept her in the midst of their family. (According to the prevailing values of the late nineteenth century, one's reputation would be besmirched by the acquaintance of someone whose marriage was annulled because of their own adultery.)
In the meantime, Innstetten has second thoughts about his action. He finally has to acknowledge that the brighter days of his marriage are long past: he does not even delight in his gradual ascent within the country’s political hierarchy.
Effi is eventually taken in by her parents, and temporarily seems to recover from the nervous disorder she has come down with. Her recovery is nonetheless temporary, as feelings of sorrow and repentance are deeply embedded in her soul. Shortly before she passes away, she summons her mother and pleads with her to inform Innstetten about her regrets about her actions, with which she has been bedevilled over the course of her declining years. The novel closes with Effi dying serenely at the parental estate of Hohen-Cremmen, in a very symmetrical ending that matches the beginning of the novel. In the novel’s final scene, her parents vaguely realise their responsibility for her intractable hardships, but ultimately they do not dare question the social constructs which caused the tragedy.
Background
Elisabeth von Ardenne (1853-1952) is said to be the inspiration for Effi Briest.Elisabeth von Ardenne was born Elisabeth von Plotho on 26 October 1853, the youngest of five children. Her place of birth, Zerben, is nowadays known as Elbe-Parey
Elbe-Parey
Elbe-Parey is a municipality in the Jerichower Land district, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is situated on the Elbe-Havel Canal, approx. 40 km northeast of Magdeburg....
. After her father’s untimely demise in 1864, she led a blissful and tranquil childhood until she made the acquaintance of her future husband, Armand Léon von Ardenne (1848-1919). The adolescent Elisabeth, who had by then received the sobriquet “Else”, is said to have displayed little interest in the young man who was five years her senior, and therefore declined his first proposal of marriage. Nonetheless she had a change of heart during the Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
, in which Ardenne had been injured. Elisabeth von Plotho and Léon von Ardenne announced their two-year engagement on 7 February 1871. The couple eventually wed on 1 January 1873.
They relocated to Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
in the summer of 1881 owing to Ardenne’s ascent within the country’s political hierarchy. In Düsseldorf they struck up a relationship with the judge Emil Hartwich
Emil Hartwich
Emil Ferdinand Hartwich was a German judge and promoter of sports education, remembered for his death in a duel.-Early life and career:...
(1843-1886). Hartwich, who also had an outstanding reputation as a painter, was suffering on account of his unhappy marriage. He and young Elisabeth von Ardenne, who was ten years his junior, turned out to have many things in common, such as their love for the theatre. The correspondence between them did not even cease when Ardenne returned to Berlin on 1 October 1884, with Elisabeth and the couple’s two young children following him.
Hartwich continued to pay sporadic visits to Elisabeth and her husband even after the couple’s departure. While he was sojourning in Berlin during the summer of 1886, he and Elisabeth both resolved to divorce their respective spouses and to marry each other. Ardenne, however, had been secretly harbouring suspicions which were confirmed when he found the letters which his wife and Hartwich had been exchanging over the course of several years. Thereupon he filed for divorce and challenged his rival to a duel
Duel
A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.Duels in this form were chiefly practised in Early Modern Europe, with precedents in the medieval code of chivalry, and continued into the modern period especially among...
, an event which attracted massive media coverage before it took place on 27 November 1886. Hartwich sustained severe injuries and died four days after the duel on 1 December 1886. Although Armand von Ardenne was initially sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, his prison term was reduced to merely eighteen days not long afterwards.
The von Ardennes’ divorce was finalised on 15 March 1887, with Armand von Ardenne being given full custody of their two children. Over the years following her separation from her husband, Elisabeth von Ardenne consecrated herself to the care of deprived or disabled people. Her name was, albeit temporarily, deleted from her family’s chronicles.
In 1904, Elisabeth’s daughter Margot was the first one to make an endeavour to track down her disowned mother. Her son Egmont encountered her only five years later. Thus Elisabeth von Ardenne reunited with her children after two decades of separation. Her former husband died in 1919 at the age of 71.
Elisabeth von Ardenne died on 4 February 1952 in Lindau
Lindau
Lindau is a Bavarian town and an island on the eastern side of Lake Constance, the Bodensee. It is the capital of the Landkreis or rural district of Lindau. The historic city of Lindau is located on an island which is connected with the mainland by bridge and railway.- History :The name Lindau was...
at the age of 98, and was interred in an Ehrengrab
Ehrengrab
An Ehrengrab is a distinction granted by certain German, Swiss and Austrian cities to one of their citizens for extraordinary services or achievements in their lifetime. If there are no descendants or institutions to care for the gravesite, the communities or cities will take responsibility for...
in Berlin. Her grandson was the scientist Manfred von Ardenne
Manfred von Ardenne
Manfred von Ardenne was a German research and applied physicist and inventor. He took out approximately 600 patents in fields including electron microscopy, medical technology, nuclear technology, plasma physics, and radio and television technology...
.
Differences between fiction and reality
Fontane, however, changed myriad details lest the novel jeopardise the privacy of the people concerned. In addition, he intended to accentuate the story’s dramatic effects. For example, Elisabeth von Plotho did not marry her husband at the age of seventeen as does Effi Briest, but when she was nineteen years of age, with Armand von Ardenne being just five and not twenty years her senior. Moreover, she launched into her extramarital relationship twelve and not only one year into her marriage, and her husband did not despatch her paramour several years after the affair had ended, but when Elisabeth was still rendezvousing with Hartwich.Fontane was cognisant of the fact that Elisabeth von Ardenne did not retreat into her privacy once her amour had come to light; in contrast to Effi Briest, she took up several jobs and devoted herself to the more disadvantaged. Elisabeth von Ardenne died in 1952 at the age of 98, whereas Effi expires when she is 29.
Additional differences between the fictitious story and the true incidents upon which it is based are the days on which several incidents in Fontane’s novel occur. Effi Briest weds her husband on 3 October, while Elisabeth von Plotho got married on 1 January. The former bears her child on 3 July, whereas neither of Elisabeth’s children was born on that day. Indeed, Margot and Egmont von Ardenne were given birth on 5 November and 4 January respectively. Finally, Elisabeth von Ardenne’s day of birth is 26 October, while Effi Briest is said to celebrate her birthday sometime in August.
Legacy
Today the novel is widely discussed and taught at German high schools.It is also taught as part of the German Prelim course at Oxford University.
The novel has exerted a major influence on later German writers, including Thomas Mann's early work Buddenbrooks
Buddenbrooks
Buddenbrooks was Thomas Mann's first novel, published in 1901 when he was twenty-six years old. The publication of the 2nd edition in 1903 confirmed that Buddenbrooks was a major literary success in Germany....
.
Editions
- First published in Deutsche RundschauDeutsche RundschauDeutsche Rundschau is a literary and political periodical established in 1874 by Julius Rodenberg.Deutsche Rundschau strongly influenced German politics, literature and culture. It was considered one of the most successful launches of periodicals in Germany...
, 1894 – 1895. - Penguin Books, 1967 ISBN 0-14-044190-5
- English translation by Hugh Rorrison and Helen Chambers, Angel Books 1996 ISBN 0-946162-44-1, reissued by Penguin (in Penguin Classics) 2001 ISBN 0-14-044766-0
Film and television adaptations
In 1974, a film versionEffi Briest (1974 film)
Effi Briest is a 1974 film directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, adapted from German author Theodor Fontane's 1894 novel of the same name. The film won the 1974 Interfilm Award at the 24th Berlin International Film Festival and was nominated for the Golden Bear...
directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Rainer Werner Maria Fassbinder was a German movie director, screenwriter and actor. He is considered one of the most important representatives of the New German Cinema.He maintained a frenetic pace in film-making...
was released, with Hanna Schygulla
Hanna Schygulla
Hanna Schygulla is a German actress and chanson singer. She is generally considered the most prominent German actress of the New German Cinema.-Life and career:Schygulla was born in Königshütte, Upper Silesia,...
as Effi Briest. Three earlier German versions were made in 1939, 1955 and, for TV, in 1970. In 2009 German production company Constantin Film AG produced the book's fifth film and television incarnation, with European Film actress 2005 winner Julia Jentsch
Julia Jentsch
Julia Jentsch is a Silver Bear, two-time European Film Award, and Lola winning German actress. She is best known as the title character in Sophie Scholl – The Final Days, Jule in The Edukators and, Liza in I Served the King of England.-Career:Jentsch was born to a family of lawyers in Berlin and...
taking on the title character.
External links
- Effi Briest, translated and abridged by William A. Cooper, 1914
- Summaries for Effi Briest