Slavery in German American and German Texts

During the nineteenth century, slavery was a persistent issue in expository and fictional writings in German. The German translation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852 set the paradigm for a German discussion of slavery.

A point of reference for expository texts and an influential model for a spate of novels on slavery, its impact on German attitudes toward slavery was vital during the nineteenth century. Numerous translations, abridged versions, and editions for young readers flooded the market after the initial publication, which was followed by a German translation of the Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1853. Specific scenes from the novel gained prominence in German fiction, among them “The Quadroon’s Story,” the death of little Eva, and Lucy’s suicide. Next to them, a taste for scenes of brutality can be seen in abridged versions and in original fiction. Missing, however, is Stowe’s appeal to Christian compassion in German compilations and citations of scenes from her novel. While Stowe’s example was thus deployed in support of abolition, an element of catering to popular demand for sentimental and sensational plots prevailed, too.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, German writers and historians considered slavery in the context of an overall evaluation of American democracy. With Charles Sealsfield’s novels and Gottfried Duden’s guidebook, a pro-slavery stance encountered the antislavery position of Jungdeutsche (Young Germans) authors like Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Borne, Karl Gutzkow, and Heinrich Laube, which was furthered by their reception of the representation of slavery in Alexis de Tocqueville and Francis Beaumont. Among German travelers, arguments were deployed both for and against slavery, in which the influence of racial bias and fear determined the pro-slavery arguments. While, at the turn of the century, German liberal historians evoked natural law in their attack on slavery and clearly considered slavery to be detrimental to economy and morals, during the course of the century the influence of race theory increased.

Eventually, the Forty-Eighter Friedrich Kapp was one of the few outspokenly abolitionist liberal historians.

When German and German American writers criticized slavery as contradictory to the American ideal of freedom, racist stereotypes accompanied this criticism and an acceptance of slavery as a necessity considering agriculture and the southern climate was occasionally voiced, even among Forty-Eighters like Otto Ruppius, Julius Froebel, and Theodor Griesinger. In spite of his antislavery stance, the latter drew an almost Edenic picture of life on a plantation in his Freiheit und Sklaverei unter dem Sternenbanner (Freedom and Slavery under the Star-Spangled Banner, 1862).

Arguments concerning the justification of slavery and the way to end it divided German “Greys” and “Greens,” and it was the radical Forty-Eighters who published abolitionist papers. The Socialist Adolf Douai, editor of the abolitionist San Antonio Zeitung (San Antonio Newspaper), is a striking instance of a writer who spoke out against all racist stereotypes. In his Land und Leute in der Union (The Country and the People of the Union, 1864), he asserted that the world of black slaves was the true home of humanity and intelligence in the South. Ottilie Assing’s close friendship with Frederick Douglass opened up a singular perspective on African American issues in her writing. Her translation of Douglass’s My Bondage and my Freedom (Sclaverei und Freiheit, 1860) introduced a black point of view to the German audience. Mathilde Franziska Anneke, a Forty- Eighter, put abolition at the center of her fictional writing, in which she attacked the cruelty of slavery and slave auctions and also showed the support of white abolitionists for blacks. Finally, the aged Alexander von Humboldt’s outspokenness for abolition had a decisive impact on the struggle.

Slave trade, slave auctions, life on the plantation, scenes of family separation and mistreatment, as well as musings on the character of slaves and slave owners were the recurring topics of writings about slavery, both fiction and nonfiction.

When racial prejudice drew on black physiognomy, a differentiation between shades of blackness singled out the beautiful “quadroon” as an erotic object and focus of compassion. While many novels before 1852 included slaves matter-of- factly, after the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, slave novels were in fashion, which, in imitation of Uncle Tom, put at their center the quadroon’s story. This story pattern contained a light-skinned female who, after the death of her white father or due to financial hardship, was sold into slavery, from which she was rescued by a wealthy white male who married her. Friedrich Gerstacker’s “Jazede” (1848) and Friedrich August Strubberg’s “Die Quadrone” (from Sclaverei in Amerika, 1862) were examples of such stories, which combined the sentimental element of the persecuted virtuous heroine with the topicality of slavery, a combination that proved pervasive in German literature. While miscegenation was abhorred in some expository texts, intermarriage of light-skinned black women and white Americans or German immigrants was a staple in these novels, which we also find in Gerstacker’s In Amerika (1872). This rare depiction of life during Reconstruction especially featured the situation of former slaves in the South.

Slavery remained a persistent motif in German fiction by authors without firsthand experience of it. While Johann Christoph Biernatzki’s Der braune Knabe (A Black Fellow, 1839) was an early example of the heroic black, Berthold Auerbach’s Das Landhaus am Rhein (The Villa on the Rhine, 1869) featured a wealthy former slave trader living in Germany and a protagonist who supports the Union side in the Civil War. Yet, many of the slavery novels and rewrites of Uncle Tom displayed a voyeuristic pleasure in violence. German newspapers and journals like Die Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung (Augsburg General Newspaper), Cotta’s Morgenblatt (Morning Journal for Educated Readers), and the family magazine Die Gartenlaube (The Arbor) were decidedly abolitionist.

While early in the century, the Augsburger Allgemeine still skeptically regarded abolitionist activities, after 1850 and during the Civil War, these newspapers and magazines supported the cause of the Union. Assing, a fervent advocate of abolition, had her articles printed in all of these papers.

The comparison of the situation of German workers and agricultural laborers

with the slaves’ situation was evoked in the German evaluation of slavery. Slavery also became a metaphor for the tribulations of poor German workers and was exploited as such in German fiction like Friedrich Wilhelm Hacklander’s Europaisches Sklaven- leben (The Life of the European Slave, 1854). After the Civil War, only a few works dealt with slavery.

Annette Bu.hler-Dietrich

Slavery in German American and German Texts

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