The subject of this volume is historicist practice in the perception of history and the development that superseded it. Both Ranke and Droysen as well as Fontane in his texts on the war of 1870/71 assimilate their descriptive procedures to 19th-century public historical culture, which was based on a number of medial innovations. But by drawing upon the contemporary psychopathology of trauma, the romantic poetics of the arabesque and aesthetic elements in early photography, Fontane's late narratives indicate the limitations of this culture and map out a new texture of historiography.