Editing Theodor Fontane (section)

===Youth===
[[File:Georg Friedrich Kersting Fontane 23 Jahe.jpg|thumb|left|Fontane at age 23, drawing by Georg Friedrich Kersting]]
Fontane was born in [[Neuruppin]], a town 30 miles northwest of Berlin, into a [[Huguenot]] family.<ref>Otto Drude: Theodor Fontane. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt, 1994. p. 11</ref> At the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to an [[apothecary]], his father's profession.<ref>Otto Drude: pp. 17–18</ref> 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 became acquainted with the progressives of the [[Vormärz]].

Fontane's first published work, the novella ''Geschwisterliebe'' (Sibling Love), was published in the ''Berlin Figaro'' in December 1839. His biographer [[Gordon A. Craig]] claims that this gave few indications of being a gifted writer: "Although the theme of [[incest]], which was to occupy Fontane on later occasions, is touched upon here, the mawkishness of the tale... is equalled by the lameness of its plot and the inertness of the style in which it is told, and [the characters] Clärchen and her brother are both so colourless that no one could have guessed that their creator had a future as a writer."<ref>''Theodor Fontane: Literature and History in the Bismarck Reich'' (Oxford University Press, 1999), {{page}}</ref>

Fontane's first job as apothecary was in [[Dresden]], after which he worked in his father's shop in the town of [[Letschin]] in the [[Oderbruch]] region. Fleeing its provincialism, Fontane published articles in the Leipzig newspaper ''[[Die Eisenbahn]]'' and translated [[Shakespeare]].<ref>Wolfgang Hädecke: Theodor Fontane - Biographie. Hanser Verlag, Munich, 1998. pp. 67–68</ref> In 1843 he joined a literary club in Berlin named [[Tunnel über der Spree]] (Tunnel over the River [[Spree (river)|Spree]]) where he became acquainted with many of the most renowned German writers, including [[Theodor Storm]], [[Joseph von Eichendorff]] and [[Gottfried Keller]].