Der Stechlin

Der Stechlin is a novel by Theodor Fontane written between 1895 and 1897, and first published in the literary journal Über Land und Meer. It was published in book form in 1898. It is Fontane's second longest novel, and last novel before he died about a year after its publication.

Its central figure is the aging Dubslav von Stechlin, widowed for thirty years and living alone in his somewhat dilapidated mansion near the shore of the Stechliner See, to be imagined in the neighbourhood of Fontane's native Neuruppin. Dubslav, a man of honest and humorous character, refuses to take himself seriously and lives modestly and contentedly in contact with his elderly valet Engelke, his politically progressive vicar Lorenzen, and Krippenstapel, the most Prussian of Prussian schoolmasters. Dubslav's only son, Woldemar, is a captain in a cavalry regiment of the guard in Berlin.