Monumenti, nazionalismo e letteratura nella Germania bismarckiana e guglielmina. Theodor Fontane e Felix Dahn

The paper analyzes the literary treatment of the monuments of Bismarckian and Wilhelmine Germany. This was a period in which the enthusiasm for the birth of the Second Reich and the need for moral as well as political unification of the nation led to a proliferation of monuments celebrating significant events and figures in German history. In particular, we examine the novel Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane (1819-1898) and the poetry of Felix Dahn (1834-1912), in which two types of monuments that were commonly found at the time are portrayed: on the one hand the official monuments of the Hohenzollerns, the expression of a dynastic and pro-government patriotism, and on the other hand the monuments created through spontaneous initiatives, like the many “Bismarck Towers” or the statues of Hermann (Arminius), which reflected a radical nationalist patriotism that was “anti-establishment”. The paper examines the function and meaning of the two types of monument in the works of Dahn and Fontane and the differences in the attitudes of the two writers, without neglecting cases of “missing” monuments such as the aborted project of a monument to Heinrich Heine.