Asterisk denotes entries on real places.
Hohen-Cremmen
An early sign that modern life is passing the Briests by is the sound of a modern through-train half a mile away. A change in the grounds at the end of the novel sends a similar message. When Effi dies, her parents remove the sundial from the circular flowerbed and replace it with her gravestone. Her time has run out, as has the time of the landed gentry with their large country estates.
Kessin. Small German port in Pomerania on the Baltic Sea. Elements of the fictional town of Kessin are modeled on Theodor Fontane’s memories of Swinemünde, where he lived as a boy. The lodgings that Effi’s new husband, Baron von Innstetten, rents are nothing more than two rooms on the main floor of an old-fashioned framework house formerly owned by a sea captain. In some ways, it seems as if the former inhabitants are still present. Hanging from the ceiling in the front hall are the captain’s model ship in full sail, a stuffed shark, and a crocodile. However, the effect of these unusual objects is negligible in comparison with the apparent presence of restless spirits who make the upper floor uninhabitable for Effi, who hears sounds of gowns sweeping across the floor and learns that the captain’s niece disappeared from there on her wedding night.
Kessin is a port of call that is busy with tourists in the summer season and all but deserted in the winter. In contrast to Hohen-Cremmen, Kessin does not have an influential and respected pastor. The provincial narrow-mindedness of the place is illustrated by its residents’ treatment of their last pastor, who was harassed to an early death for suggesting that the sea captain’s Chinese servant be granted a churchyard burial. Now it seems that the ghost of the Chinese man, who danced with the niece, remains in the house.
Natural and supernatural dangers abound in Effi’s Kessin home. The upper floor of the house is haunted, and the lower floor houses a crazed coachman’s wife with a black hen on her lap. There is a shipwreck off the coast, and carriages narrowly avert getting sucked into a type of quicksand. Effi feels so vulnerable and threatened in Kessin that she wishes she were hidden by a protective wall of snow. The place leaves its mark on her.
*Berlin. Capital of Germany to which Baron von Innstetten takes Effi when he is promoted to section head of a ministry department. There, they choose to live in one of the tall new Keith Street houses that is divided into several apartments. The still-damp plaster they find when they move in seems to signify an auspicious new beginning. However, six years later the past resurfaces to ruin Effi’s marriage. Fontane portrays Berlin as a fickle society in which friendships are superficial and contingent on a rigid moral code. After Effi is divorced, only her elderly physician and her maidservant attend to her, and her church is of no help. Furthermore, as Effi’s husband discovers, the famous Berlin opera and other cultural diversions are inadequate substitutes for meaningful human contact. It is an interesting coincidence that Koniggratzer Street, where Effi lives in ignominy after her divorce, not only effectively allows her to disappear within the large metropolis, but also itself has disappeared from the map of Berlin.
Fontane himself lived in Berlin, and his descriptions of the central part of the city are still accurate, thanks to the Germans’ restoration of the re-united Berlin as closely as possible to its pre-1945 configuration. Dorotheen Street, for example, which the East Germans renamed Clara Zetkin Street, is once again Dorotheen Street. It is easy to trace Effi’s route from the Friedrichs Street train station to Dorotheen Street to Schadow Street, and to locate Keith Street just southwest of the Tiergarten. It remains one of the better areas of the city.