Fritz Reuter - Later Works

Later Works

The novel Ut mine Stromtid (3 volumes) is by far the greatest of Reuter's writings. The men and women he describes are the men and women he knew in the villages and farmhouses of Mecklenburg, and the circumstances in which he places them are the circumstances by which they were surrounded in actual life. Ut mine Stromtid also presents some of the local aspects of the revolutionary movement of 1848. M. W. MacDowell translated this book from German into English as From my Farming Days in 1878. The better translation is that by Katharine Tyler which predated MacDowell's, appearing, in 1871, in Littell's Living Age, and in 1872 in book form, entitled Seedtime and Harvest.

In 1863 Reuter transferred his residence from Neubrandenburg to Eisenach, after having received an honorary doctorate from Rostock University, and here he died on 12 July 1874.

Reuter's stories are lacking in plot, but are marked by clever episodes, skillful character drawing and a humor, which, despite the difficulty of his medium, was universally appreciated in Germany. His Sämtliche Werke (collected works), in 13 volumes, were first published in 1863-1868. To these were added in 1875 two volumes of Nachgelassene Schriften, with a biography by Adolf von Wilbrandt, and in 1878 two supplementary volumes to the works appeared. A popular edition in 7 vols was published in 1877-1878 (last edition, 1902); there are also editions by Karl Friedrich Müller (18 vols, 1905), and Wilhelm Seelmann (7 vols, 1905-1906). Interest in Reuter was revived in the period after World War II, in part through the efforts of Friedrich Griese.

Among the institutions concerning themselves with the works of Reuter are the Fritz Reuter Gesellschaft e.V. in Neubrandenburg, the Fritz-Reuter-Literaturmuseum in Stavenhagen, the Reuter-Wagner-Museum in Eisenach, and the Fritz Reuter Literary Archive (Fritz Reuter Literaturarchiv) Hans-Joachim Griephan in Berlin. The latter archive keeps an index of the letters from and to Fritz Reuter.