»Wo liegt das Glück?«  Jantzen 109 Blätter about both Wildenbruch and Mennonites´ mission to the Indians. Any reader of Quitt who knew about Wildenbruch´s Mennonites would have surely pondered why Fontane´s were so different. 70 In December 1887 Wildenbruch finally managed to get his Der Menon­it into the repertoire of the Königliches Schauspielhaus only to face a new challenge. The Mennonites published open letters against the performance in numerous newspapers. They also wrote directly to the theater´s general manager, von Hülsen, who in turn asked Emperor Frederick III what to do. The deathly-ill emperor resolved the conflict on June 11, 1888, by noting in the margins of the Mennonites´ protest letter,»Menonit aufführen.« 71 He died four days later, resulting in the premier being postponed. Fontane wrote his daughter,»Für mich hat das große Ereigniß das eine Gute: daß ich den Wildenbruchschen ›Menoniten‹ nicht zu sehn und was noch wich­tiger ist, nicht drüber zu schreiben brauche.« 72 Later that year Wilden­bruch´s Die Quitzows was produced and Fontane for the first time gave him a positive review which meant a lot to Wildenbruch. Their relationship be­came warmer from that time on. 73 Thus, for many readers back then, unlike today, Mennonites were known and served as an important symbol. Those readers would have known about their history of rejecting military service as well as the con­troversy over Wildenbruch´s depiction of their history. They certainly also would have known that Wildenbruch saw his writing as being in the ser­vice of the empire and that Wildenbruch´s list of imperial enemies was identical to Bismarck´s – Catholics, Socialists, and non-Germans. His friend and biographer, Berthold Litzmann, reported that Wildenbruch intended Der Menonit to aid in the completion of German unification.»Die Mächte und Ohnmächte, mit denen Reinhold der Menonit kämpft, sind dieselben Feinde, an denen sich Ernst von Wildenbruch mehr als sechzig Jahre müde und wund gerungen hat.« 74 Der Menonit was staged as an Anti-Catholic work. The Mennonites wore hats like Catholic priests and as Prussians they use the Bavarian and Catholic greeting,»Grüß Gott.« 75 Wildenbruch never developed an image of America in his works, but Fontane used his high-profile image of a»proper« Prussia as a foil for his social criticism set in America among Mennonites. Wildenbruch´s pious desire to perfect an idealized Germany and the sensitive matter of the Mennonite emigration suggests why Fontane was so interested in Mennonites. There would be many settings in Germany and America where one could find Catholics, atheists, Socialists, and non-Ger­mans and each group could be used to question aspects of German society. Where, however, could one find direct opponents of Prussian militarism and a narrow nationalism who were not already overburdened with a neg­ative image in middle-class circles as the Socialists and other enemies of the Reich were? Mennonites made it possible to develop a mirror-image