K∣RCHHOFF,T HEODOR b. January 8, 1828; Uetersen, Holstein d. March 2, 1899; San Francisco, California
One of the most important German American travel writers of the nineteenth century. Kirchhoff participated as an officer on the side of Schleswig and Holstein in its failed wars of secession from Denmark in 1848.
In 1851 he emigrated to the United States and attempted to find a new life and profession. He worked as a pianist in St. Louis. He found a job in a post office. He later became a bookkeeper, an upholsterer, and an innkeeper. As a photographer, he traveled through the Mississippi valley from Minnesota to Louisiana. In Osyka, Mississippi, he owned a pub. In Clarksville, Texas, he opened a shop. When the Civil War broke out, his shop went bankrupt, and he was forced to return to Europe. In 1863, however, he was back in the United States and opened a store in The Dalles, Ohio. He also began writing travel stories and articles, which were published in the famous journal Die Gartenlaube (The Arbor). Between 1865 and 1869, he traveled to New York, Nicaragua, Cuba, New Orleans, Idaho, and Oregon, where he visited the gold mines, and finally San Francisco, where he settled down. Together with a business partner, Kirchhoff began trading in gold and jewels and optical instruments. The business went very well and enabled him to retire from it in 1886. From this time on, he dedicated his life to the writing of travel literature.In his time Kirchhoff was regarded as one of the most important German American authors of travel literature. His numerous texts included travel and adventure reports, essays about the social and cultural conditions of the places he had visited, and poems and songs—all of which were published in German and German American newspapers and journals. Among his books were Californische Kulturbilder (Cultural Impressions from California, 1886), Reise nach Hawaii (Journey to Hawaii, 1890), and Allerhand Heiteres aus Californien (Humorous Thoughts from California, 1899). Parts of his two-volume work Reisebilder und Skizzen aus Amerika (1875—1876) were published in English under the title Oregon East, Oregon West: Travels and Memoirs in 1987.
Heinz Peter Brogiato
See also Travel Literature, German-U.S.
References and Further Reading
Frankel, Ludwig. “Kirchhoff, Theodor.” Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vol. 51. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1906, pp.161-165.