Freelance Author in Neubrandenburg @museum.de

M: "To all my acquaintances, as well as my business associates: This is to humbly inform you that I shall be taking up residence in Neubrandenburg from April the second of this year.F: An ad Fritz Reuter inserted into the daily newspaper “Neubrandenburger Tageblatt” in April 1856. Luise and he left sleepy Treptow in favour of Neubrandenburg, a town with almost 7,000 residents. Fritz planned to go back to working as a tutor. But gradually, literary success set in and from then on, he was able to make a living as a freelance writer.

M: In Neubrandenburg, as previously in Treptow, he attracted a large circle of liberal-minded friends. He'd known some of these men since the days of the Bourgeois Revolution. They'd meet in pubs, debate and talk politics – and Fritz Reuter, with his undisputed gift for storytelling, was always at the centre of these groupings.

F: Participants included: wine merchant Adolf Ahlers, pharmacist and banker Viktor Siemerling and the Boll brothers: the younger, lanky Ernst, was a scientist and tutor, while well-nourished Franz was a theologian, teacher and historian. Others also sometimes joined the circle, like the Schwerin court architect and socialist Georg Adolph Demmler and the court painter Theodor Schloepke.

M: Reuter stayed in Neubrandenburg for seven years. That period not only included his early literary renown; he also wrote several plays and outlined or even wrote almost all his major works.

F: Reuter was on his way to becoming a writer recognised far beyond Mecklenburg's borders. Over the following decades, his novels and verse epics were translated into roughly a dozen languages.