How did Fontane's historical background influence his writing?
My lifelong engagement with Prussian history, its traditions, and its gradual transformation profoundly shaped my literary output. I saw history not as a grand narrative of wars and kings, but as the cumulative effect of countless individual lives and social interactions. This historical sensibility allowed me to imbue my characters and their struggles with a sense of continuity and consequence, demonstrating how the past inevitably casts its shadow upon the present.
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