3 h 45 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 3 h 45 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when a man thinks he can manage a murder as neatly as he runs his inn?
In Tschechin, a village in the flat, marshy Oderbruch, Abel Hradscheck keeps an inn and shop. Clever and sociable, he is also deep in debt. Then Szulski arrives: a Polish commercial traveller who collects money for the firm Hradscheck owes. He carries cash, and his visit puts temptation close at hand.
In Under the Pear Tree, Theodor Fontane follows a crime into a household and out through a watching village. Ursel Hradscheck shares her husband's strain, and her loyalty faces a test. Neighbours notice, gossip and guess, sometimes wrongly. The tension lies less in solving a puzzle than in watching guilt work on a man who believes he remains in control.
What you’ll discover
- An innkeeper under pressure Meet Abel Hradscheck, whose easy manner offers no escape from the debts closing around him.
- A dangerous visitor Follow Szulski into an inn where the money he carries becomes a temptation.
- A village full of guesses Watch small observations become rumours as neighbours struggle to make sense of wrongdoing.
- Loyalty under strain See how growing trouble tests Ursel Hradscheck within the household she shares with Abel.
- A quiet telling of crime Feel the tension between Fontane's calm village chronicle and the guilt at its centre.
Who will love it
This is for readers who enjoy a crime story told through character, a village full of sharp portraits, and a storyteller with a quiet sense of humor.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A comfortable life comes under threat
- Respectability hides a growing debt
- A buried body suggests a plan
- The village helps build a lie
- A quiet departure leaves troubling clues
- The pear tree yields uncertain proof
- Prosperity cannot quiet the hidden fear
- Small objects carry the growing pressure
- The question is who will see
Who’s who
- Abel HradscheckA witty, gambling innkeeper deep in debt, who longs to keep his comfortable house and good name at any price.
- Ursel HradscheckHis proud, refined wife from near Hildesheim, who fears poverty above everything and carries a heavy conscience.
- Mother JeschkeThe village wise woman and next-door neighbor, who casts charms, watches from her window and speaks in riddles.
- Pastor EcceliusA kind, educated clergyman who stands by the Hradschecks and would rather think well of people than question them.
- Judge VowinkelThe careful court official from Küstrin who tries to look into the rumors without causing a public scandal.
- Constable GeelhaarA tall, hard-drinking village policeman who bears a grudge against Hradscheck and hunts for proof.
- KunickeA cheerful old farmer and war veteran, who is the first to laugh, the first to drink and the first to forgive.
- EdeThe red-haired shop boy, simple and frightened, who sees and hears more than anyone realizes.
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Under the Pear Tree
by Theodor Fontane · 1885
A debt-ridden innkeeper digs up a dead soldier under his old pear tree and starts to make a plan.
Medium level2–5 hours to readEnglish
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In short
What does a respectable innkeeper do when his comfortable life is about to be taken from him? In Under the Pear Tree, Abel Hradscheck stands in his garden on an autumn day in the early 1830s and thinks: it is all mine, but for how much longer?
Under the Pear Tree at a glance
- Reading time
- About 2 h 20 min1 h 50 min fast, 2 h 45 min slow
- Length
- 33,400 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1885by Theodor Fontane
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A charming innkeeper is sinking into debt
The story opens in Tschechin, a prosperous village in the Oderbruch. Abel Hradscheck runs the inn and general store there. From the street he looks like a man who has done well.
The account book tells another story. The money from his rapeseed and his buyer Leist goes to principal and interest. A salesman from the Krakow firm Olszewski-Goldschmidt and Son is due any day to collect a bill three years old. Hradscheck also buys a lottery ticket and loses at cards, so the hole only grows deeper.
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Details
- First published
- 1885
- Language
- English
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Fontane, Theodor. Under the Pear Tree. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/under-the-pear-tree.
Fontane, T. (2026). Under the pear tree. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/under-the-pear-tree (Original work published 1885)
Fontane, Theodor. Under the Pear Tree. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/under-the-pear-tree.
@book{fontane2026under,
author = {Fontane, Theodor},
title = {Under the Pear Tree},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/under-the-pear-tree},
note = {First published 1885}
}
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What is Under the Pear Tree about?
It tells of Abel Hradscheck, a debt-ridden innkeeper in an Oderbruch village, who finds a body in his garden and conceives a plan to save his fortune. A judge, a pastor and the neighbors slowly come to look at what he does.
Who is Mother Jeschke in the book?
She is Hradscheck's neighbor, an old woman who works charms and folk cures and claims to know who will die. She watches from her window and speaks in hints, so Hradscheck never knows how much she knows.
Why is the pear tree so important?
The old pear tree stands near the end of the garden strip and bears fine fruit, which the villagers later call French pears. It is the place where a secret lies and the point toward which the story turns.
The author
Theodor Fontane
1819–1898 · German novelist and poet
Theodor Fontane was a German novelist and poet born in Neuruppin in 1819. He worked as a pharmacist and journalist and lived in Berlin and, for several years, London. He wrote Under the Pear Tree, published in 1885, and Effi Briest, published in book form in 1895. He died in Berlin in 1898.
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