»Wo liegt das Glück?«  Jantzen 91 »Wo liegt das Glück?« Reflections on America and Mennonites as Symbols and Setting in Quitt Mark Jantzen Und dabei nahm er einen Blaker und das Amerika-Buch und stieg in seine Giebelkammer hinauf. Oben aber schob er einen Stuhl an sein Bett. Und eh er das Licht auslöschte, sah er noch einmal auf den Titel des Buchs. Der lautete:»Die Neue Welt oder Wo liegt das Glück?« 1 This fictitious book title was only one of the literary inventions Theodor Fontane created for Quitt. This novel, as is well known, consists of a first half set in Silesia and a second in America. After the protagonist Lehnert Menz flees Silesia he reappears in chapter seventeen among Mennonites in Indian Territory, today the state of Oklahoma. He is welcomed into the Hornbostel household, a Prussian immigrant family led by the farmer and congregational leader Obadja and his children Tobias and Ruth. Since ­Fontane never visited America but knew the setting in Silesia well from his vacation stays there, it is generally assumed that much more in the second half was simply invented than in the first, a debilitating departure from his usual careful observation and description of German society. This disdainful dismissal of Fontane´s depiction of America is a key rea­son for the lack of academic attention to this work. The Scottish-American historian Gordon Craig called it,»an America that no American will re­cognize.« 2 Wilhelm Zwiebel had a similar opinion. 3 Christian Grawe named the two-part plot and»ein weitgehend Fontanes Fantasie entsprungenes Amerika« as the main reason that Quitt is still considered his least success­ful work. 4 Fontane´s America was ostensibly so unbelievable that Liselotte Voss posited the second half as a dream following Lehnert´s death and as a flight beyond reality. 5 For these interpreters this America fails both as symbol and as setting. Positive assessments of Quitt nonetheless exist. Hans-Heinrich Reuter was the most exuberant, finding here»der erste Exilroman der modernen deutsche Literatur.« He sees the work as the central and high point of