Theodor Fontane (30 December 1819 – 20 September 1898) was a
German novelist and
poet, regarded by many as the most important 19th-century
German-language realist writer. Fontane was born in
Neuruppin, a town 30 miles northwest of Berlin, into a
Huguenot family. At the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to an
apothecary, his father's profession. He became an apothecary himself, and in 1839, at the age of 20, wrote his first work (
Heinrichs IV. erste Liebe, now lost). His further education was in
Leipzig where he came into contact with the progressives of the
Vormärz. Fontane's first published work, the novella
Geschwisterliebe ("Sibling Love"), appeared in the
Berlin Figaro in December 1839.
