Household goods, souvenirs, junk or rubbish - the literature of Realism reflects the changed relationships between things in the 19th century in an interesting way. In her turn to marginal, seemingly insignificant things, she is both innovative and analytical. In this volume, Kerstin Roose takes a look at the various literary phenomena of junk as cultural-historical and poetological figures of reflection in Gottfried Keller's work. It shows how, influenced by processes of industrialization and mechanization, the subject-object relationships change over the long term and how these changes are reflected in the literature of realism in terms of motifs and formal aesthetics. Her work makes it clear that reliable orders of things are becoming just as relevant for the orientation and stabilization of modern existence as they are increasingly problematic.