ABSTRACT
The rule of law itself has been put into question by this sudden descent from legally sanctioned conflict into anarchy. In the case of Konrektor Othegraven, freely and lucidly made moral and political choice entails his own death. At the end of the novel he is shot by the French after the attack on the French garrison at Frankfurt an der Oder which he has just advocated and been instrumental in organizing. Central among these is the sequence following the news of Graf Yorck's capitulation to the Russians. Yorck's action is certainly a capitulation, indeed a breach of faith in relation to the French with whom Prussia has entered into alliance. The power of Theodor Fontane's narrative critique in this episode is starkly revealed by the sequel, when Lewin and his friends are met after the lecture by the officer Haacke who informs them that the dissident general faces a court-martial.
