Theodor left home at the age of twelve to begin his preparation for life.  The first year he spent at the gymnasium in Neu-Ruppin.  The following year (1833) he was sent to an industrial school in Berlin.  There he lived with his uncle August, whose character and financial management remind one of our poet’s father.  Theodor was irregular in his attendance at school and showed more interest in the newspapers and magazines than in his studies.  At the age of sixteen he became the apprentice of a Berlin apothecary with the expectation of eventually succeeding his father in business.  After serving his apprenticeship he was employed as assistant dispenser by apothecaries in Berlin, Burg, Leipzig, and Dresden.  When he reached the age of thirty he became a full-fledged dispenser and was in a position to manage the business of his father, but the latter had long ago retired and moved to the village of Letschin.  The Fontane home was later broken up by the mutual agreement of the parents to dissolve their unhappy union.  The father went first to Eberswalde and then to Schiffmuehle, where he died in 1867; the mother returned to Neu-Ruppin and died there in 1869.

The beginning of Theodor’s first published story appeared in the Berliner Figaro a few days before he was twenty years of age.  The same organ had previously contained some of his lyrics and ballads.  The budding poet had belonged to a Lenau Club and the fondness he had there acquired for Lenau’s poetry remained unchanged throughout his long life, which is more than can be said of many literary products that won his admiration in youth.  He also joined a Platen Club, which afforded him less literary stimulus, but far more social pleasure.  During his year in Leipzig he brought himself to the notice of literary circles by the publication, in the Tageblatt, of a satirical poem entitled Shakespeare’s Stocking.  As a result he was made a member of the Herwegh Club, where he met, among others, the celebrated Max Mueller, who remained his life-long friend.  After a year in Dresden Fontane returned to Leipzig, hoping to be able to support himself there by his writings.  He made the venture too soon.  When he ran short of funds he visited his parents for a while and then went to Berlin to serve his year in the army (1844).  He was granted a furlough of two weeks for a trip to London at the expense of a friend.  In Berlin he joined a Sunday Club, humorously called the “Tunnel over the Spree,” at the meetings of which original literary productions were read and frankly criticised.  During the middle of the nineteenth century almost all the poetic lights of Berlin were members of the “Tunnel.”  Heyse, Storm, and Dahn were on the roll, and Fontane came into touch with them; he and Storm remained friends in spite of the fact that Storm once called him “frivolous.”  Fontane later evened the score by classing Storm among the “sacred kiss monopolists.”  The most productive members of the Club during this period