Fluid “Heimat”: Water and Nature Writing in Theodor Fontane’s Ramblings through Mark Brandenburg

From 1859 onwards, Theodor Fontane embarks on a series of walks and excursions to the Mark of Brandenburg around Berlin and reports on them in his travelogue Ramblings through Mark Brandenburg (4 volumes, 1862–1882). To date, researchers have assumed that nature is not a primary topic of this work but only a medium in Fontane’s method of linking places to facts and stories. A rereading from a new materialist and ecocritical approach and with a focus on the role of water can demonstrate that Fontane’s text accords agency and productivity to nonhuman nature in a manner similar to the nature writing of English and American traditions. The contribution shows the Ramblings to be an inventory of Mark of Brandenburg’s lakes, streams, canals, and wetlands, a record of their place names, and of the stories related to them. While water is revealed to be a formative force of the Mark Brandenburg’s topography and history, it also organizes the discourse of the Ramblings, and the material agency of water proves to be constitutive to the production of the text. Water is essential in the Ramblings’ construction of Mark Brandenburg as “Heimat,” but this water-based “Heimat” is fluid, ephemeral, and precarious.