engaged for five years, proposing that they should be married in October.  She hastened to secure an apartment in Berlin and furnish it, and the wedding was celebrated on the sixteenth of October.  Fontane thought he had entered the harbor of success, but he lost his ministerial position in six weeks and was again at sea.  He had, however, a companion ready to share his trials and triumphs, and their union proved to be very happy.

In the summer of 1852 he was sent by the Prussian Ministry to London to study English conditions and write reports for the government journals, Preussische Zeitung and Die Zeit.  In 1855 he was again sent to England, and this time his journalistic engagement lasted for four years.  Accounts of his experiences are contained in A Summer in London (1854) and Beyond the Tweed (1860).  From 1860 to 1870 he was on the staff of the Kreuzzeitung and during this time served as a war correspondent in the campaigns of 1864, 1866, and 1870-71.  While accompanying the army in France he was seized with a desire to visit the home of Joan of Arc at Domremy, and was captured, taken for a spy, and imprisoned for a time on the island of Oleron in the Atlantic Ocean.  An interesting account of his experiences is given in Prisoner of War (1871).  During his years in England he had taken advantage of the opportunity to visit Scotland and familiarize himself with its picturesque beauties and its wealth of historical and literary associations.  In the midst of these travels the thought had occurred to him that his own Mark of Brandenburg had its beauties, too, and its wealth of associations.  On returning to Berlin he began his long series of journeyings through his native province, making a thorough study of both country and people, particularly the Junkers, for which his trained powers of observation, combined with warm patriotism and true love of historical research, eminently fitted him.  His published records of these travels, Rambles through the Mark of Brandenburg (1862-81) and Five Castles (1889), won for him the title of the interpreter of the Mark.  His right to this distinction was further established by the novels in which he later employed the fruits of these studies.

Fontane is equally celebrated as an interpreter of Berlin, where he lived for over fifty years, being the one prominent German writer to identify himself with a great city.  His two autobiographical works, From Twenty to Thirty and C.F.  Scherenberg, tell of his early experiences in the Prussian capital.  From 1870 to 1889 he was dramatic critic for the Vossische Zeitung, for which he reviewed the performances at the Royal Theatre.  In one of his last criticisms he hailed Hauptmann as a dramatist of promise.  In 1876 he was elected secretary of the Berlin Academy of Arts, but served only a brief time.  In 1891 the Emperor made him a present of three thousand marks for his services to German literature.  In 1894 the University of Berlin bestowed upon him the honorary title of doctor of philosophy.  He died on the twentieth day of September, 1898.