Eine Kindheit im 19. Jahrhundert: Die Konfiguration 'Kind' und ihr literarischer Widerstand bei Theodor Fontan

This dissertation places the child protagonists of Theodor Fontane's Grete Minde and his autobiographical novel Meine Kinderjahre into a sociohistorical context. To define our pedological approach, the first chapter assesses the research undertaken on the concept of the child thus far. The remaining chapters discuss the textual childhoods of Grete and young Theodor as being historically located at the beginning and the end, respectively, of a transitional period in which the social views on childhood changed. This transition, which took centuries to complete, marks the shift from the pre-modern to the bourgeois childhood paradigms, the latter preparing children for intellectual growth and intersubjectivity at the cost of disciplining them (cf. Rudolf Kreis). Fontane's interpretations of Grete's and his childhood self are discussed as wish-productive attempts to subvert the friction of these changes in Western mentality. It is in this sense that Fontane's texts are seen as exerting resistance against the socially agreed upon notions of childhood.;Grete is viewed as the product of her foreign mother's early bourgeois socialization within a family still guided by pre-modern traditions. Her progressive up-bringing instills in Grete a socially unique sense of selfhood, but her attempts to satisfy her need for acceptance and love fail due to the Tangermunders' inability to break out of their own sociohistorically limited reality. In contrast to the historic legend, Fontane shows Grete retaliating by eradicating the town that epitomizes an out-dated childhood concept. This concept, though only rudimentarily, also informs the relationship of Fontane's parents with their children. Contrary to most interpretations, Fontane's childhood is not seen as idyllic in our analysis. Instead, his Kinderjahre are explored as an attempt to repair an "injured" self (cf. Claudia Liebrand). This claim seems supported by Fontane's assertion to have healed a severe psychological crisis by writing his memoirs. Whereas Grete dies in her act of fiery revenge, the figure of young Theodor is liberated from the restraints of a love-less childhood by the author's re-imagination of his own childhood.