Travel Literature, German-U.S.
Travel literature encompasses a broad range of genres, such as emigration brochures, magazines, letters, diaries, and reports of personal experiences. A series of generic modalities has developed that are aligned to specific reader expectations and include everything from researchers’ descriptive accounts of the country to personal impressions of a foreign culture.
Accordingly, the ethnological view dominant in travel literature is primarily bound by the requirement to provide information and satiate curiosity. Additionally, travel literature describes a process of self-reflection and a hermeneutic differentiation of culture. Irrespective of whether such literature is authentic or fabricated, it invites the reader to participate in the foreign and self-perception of cultural, social, and political processes, even though the self-prescribed demand for objectivity prevalent into the eighteenth century increasingly bows to a more personal perspective. This is partially linked with a functional change of paradigms sparked in the first half of the nineteenth century, in which the information contained in travel literature becomes a means of enhancing understanding. Travel literature thus no longer serves a solely descriptive purpose, but attempts to help the reader understand processes and foreign behavior. This functional change arises partially from the context of the exodus to the United States in which travel literature is increasingly set. From a literary and sociological point of view, it is also rooted in the phenomenon of mass tourism and optimized transport, which broadens the cross section of authors of travel literature from scientists, military personnel, and missionaries to businesspeople, journalists, the aristocracy, and writers.This process brings about a cultural transfer that has been fostered by the Germans with greater intensity than by the Americans.
With the exception of the European tours undertaken by American intellectuals of the nineteenth century, German American travel literature chiefly comprises German-language texts. Travel reports by American authors are less common and their experiences tend to be channelled into fictional texts.From the time ofAmerica’s discovery to the seventeenth century, exclusively soldiers (Nikolaus Feldmann, Ulrich Schmidel, Hans Staden), missionaries, and scientists described the New World in travel and research reports. In line with the “curiosity” figure of speech, the focus mainly falls on exotic elements such as tobacco, animals and unfamiliar plants, and observations of a mythological and religious ritualistic ilk, such as the “vitzliputzli” cult, remembering the demon-god and culture-hero of the Aztecs “Huitzilopochtli.” (Vitzliputzli is an archaic form of Huitzilopochtli.) The assessments of America, both South and North (Theodor de Bry’s America, Levinus Hulsius Schiffahrten [Voyages]), diverge considerably. The accounts, in the main translations of the travel reports written by Jesuits and Spanish conquerors on the topics of cannibalism, child sacrifice, and disease, trigger a Christianization process, the excesses of which are criticized by humanist missionaries such as Bartholome de Las Casas. When the Palatine pietists settled in Germantown near Philadelphia in 1693 and subsequently in North Carolina, North America became a topic of growing interest. The exodus fueled by religious and political intolerance gained momentum, as did the foundation of German colonies based on the idea of an ahistoric continent ready to be acculturated. At the same time, disappointed emigrants and concerned clerics warned of the difficulties of emigration in pamphlets and writings.
In the eighteenth century, travel literature received a political slant. America became the fate of the 30,000 soldiers who, like Johann Gottfried Seume (Mein Leben [My Life], 1813), were sold to England and dispatched to America (cf.
also Bruno Frank, Zwolftausend [Twelve Thousand], 1927). The subsidy treaties (1776—1778) between German princes and England, which were recognized in the eighteenth century as a legitimate right of the princes, were interpreted as despotism by several poets (Christoph Friedrich Bretzner, Das Rauschgen [Tipsiness], 1786; Joseph Marius Babo, Das Winterquartier in Amerika [The Winter Quarters in America], 1778). The officers’ reports recorded that the absence of a state church promoted the disintegration of morality and the rise of avarice. The appropriated reports of officers, missionaries, and settlers were joined by merchant reports, a novelty in German American travel literature. Under the influence of Johann Gottfried Herder, trade relations and industry were portrayed in travel literature as a means of promoting humanity through which America’s image received a lift.The image of Germany in the eyes of American authors at the end of the eighteenth century was consistent and shaped largely by the efficiency of the Pennsylvania Dutch (Michel St. Jean de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, 1782) and the respect that German officers and soldiers enjoyed in the American War of Independence. Admiration for the Prussian sense of duty and the state of the “Hohen- zollern,” stemming from their mythiciza- tion by Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, resulted in a positive view of Germany, prompting numerous Americans to study at German universities in the nineteenth century and to familiarize themselves with the German intellectual and cultural world. Henry W. Longfellow records his experiences during his second trip to Europe in 1835 and 1836 in Hyperion, which features a sound analysis of German literature. Washington Irving’s predilection for German legends and fairy tales, which he collected for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip van Winkle, also arise from this cultural exchange. Surprisingly, many travelers in Germany, such as Hermann Melville, James Russel Lowell, and Charles Eliot Norton, showed considerable reserve toward Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quite in contrast to the theologian Edward Robinson, the botanist Lewis David von Schweinitz, and the scientist Joseph Green Cogswell, all of whom spent time in Weimar.
Although transcendentalists, such as Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who devoted an essay to Goethe in Representative Men and always carried a volume of Goethe’s works with him, productively assimilated German philosophy, they never visited the country of poets and thinkers. In American texts of the nineteenth century the romantic image of Germany appeared with its breathtaking landscapes, such as in James Fenimore Cooper’s second volume of the European Trilogy, which is set in the Palatinate of the sixteenth century. In his impressions and vignettes Bayard Taylor reinforces the image of a country of castles and ruins (Views Afoot, 1846). Moreover, through the accounts of the political refugees following the Karlsbad decrees of 1819 (Francis Lieber), Germany was considered a country of academic ideals and the sciences. More than 10,000 American students enrolled at German universities in the nineteenth century. Gottingen alone attracted students such as the theologian Edward Everett, the Germanist George Ticknor, the philologist George Bancroft, the philosopher Joseph Green Cogswell, and George Henry Calvert, who went on to shape Goethe’s reception in, among others, Life and Works of Goethe, appearing in 1875. Information on student life in Gottingen, Berlin, and Heidelberg, and on traveling academics was provided by Henry Edwin Dwight’s Travels in the North of Germany (1829), William Howitt’s The Student-Life of Germany (1842), and Ralph Keeler. The education-oriented and cultural interest of the nineteenth century was specific to American intellectuals and also defined by works such as John Murray’s travel Handbook for North Germany and John Russel’s Tour in Germany, in which a specific route and sights are described. The Rhine became a favorite location as well as a source of inspiration (Thomas Hood, Up the Rhine, 1839), above all in the books on Germany by William Howitt.One of the great nineteenth-century travelers of Germany was Mark Twain, who in A Tramp Abroad (1880) summarized his stays in Vienna, Berlin, Bayreuth, and Bad Nauheim by depicting a personal romantic image of Germany, featuring descriptions of the landscape and architecture.
His measured description of political and social aspects went hand in hand with his admiration of technical progress, which prompted him to describe Berlin as the “German Chicago.”The visits of German authors and intellectuals to America multiplied after 1830. The period of emigration created a market for emigration literature, in which emigration brochures with log books competed with propaganda texts containing fabricated reports of America, such that their readers could barely distinguish between fact and fiction. Between 1815 and 1850 more than fifty travel reports were written in which motifs, procedures, and personal experiences of emigration were described, such as in Ludwig Gall’s Meine Auswanderung nach den Vereinigten Staaten in Nordamerika (My Emigration to the United States of North America, 1822). A literature market for a German audience also emerged in the United States in general and Chicago, New York, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee in particular and featured a broadly based printed press. Many authors filled posts in American education and cultural fields (Francis Lieber, Charles Follen, Otto Ruppius, Julius Frobel). These authentic reports on social and political conditions are flanked by many travel accounts that focused less on fact, but pandered to the reader’s imagination by magnifying the image of the American El Dorado. A famous example was the travel report by physician Gottfried Duden (Bericht uber eine Reise nach den westlichen Staaten Nor- damerikas [Report on a journey to the Western States of North America and a stay of several years along the Missouri], 1829), extensive passages of which were taken from travel manuals and embellished with fabulous notions. The travel reports born of curiosity and a sense of adventure (Friedrich Ger- stacker, Streif- und Jagdzuge durch die Vereinigten Staaten NordAmerikas [Expeditions and Hunts through the United States of North America], 1844) and others arising from specific objectives, such as military or scientific stays in the United States (Duke Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar, 1828, Duke Paul Wilhelm, Erste Reise nach dem nordlichen Amerika [First Journey to North America], 1835) proved highly popular.
These reports were written with a view to shedding light on American society, and were diametrically opposed to Charles Sealsfield’s concepts of moralities and his studies of the period, which were to a larger extent motivated by collective psychology (Neue Land- und Seebilder [New Images of the Land and Seas], 1839).The Austrian Karl Postl (alias Charles Sealsfield) visited the United States four times for several years at a time (Transat- lantische Reiseskizzen [Transatlantic Travel Sketches], 1834; Morton oder die groβe Tour [Morton or the Great Tour], 1844) and held an American passport. Writing many of his novels also in English (Tokeah, or the white nose, 1828 [Der Legitime und die Republikaner 1833]), he recorded his observations in the essay entitled The United States of North America as They Are (1827), in which he clearly shared Andrew Jackson’s political views and discussed the displacement of the Indians. Sealsfield saw America, with which he associates the republican political system, in direct contrast to Metternich’s Europe.
Several of the authors of the prerevolutionary Vormarz period sought political asylum in America, leading to greater coverage in travel literature of America’s role as a country of exile. The experiences of Charles Follen, Franz Lieber, and Karl Beck, portrayed in republican freedom songs and reports, were designed to trigger revolutionary upheavals in Germany. Whereas the majority of these authors saw the United States as a political and military base for instigating Europe’s renewal (Friedrich Hecker, Amand Goegg, Gottfried Kinkel), others such as Wilhelm Weitling attempted to impose European social models on America. The German Americans became increasingly assimilated (Carl Schurz), committing themselves to the republican camp in the American Civil War (Ernst A. Zundt, Reinhold Solger, Franz Sigel, Friedrich Kapp, Karl Heinzen).
The interests of German visitors to America, therefore, left their mark on domestic politics. Thus, the issue of slavery and calls for political and social justice for the North American Indians, such as in the writings of Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben and Friedrich Freiherr von Gagern, emerged as politically controversial topics in the United States. Around this time, the Socialist movement and unionized workers gained ground largely under the influence of German Socialists (Joseph Weydemeyer, Adolf Strodtmann), paving the way for numerous authors such as Wilhelm Hasen- clever and Leopold Jacoby to seek refuge in the United States, following Bismarck’s Anti-Socialist Law of 1878.
In the travel reports from the Grun- derzeit (period of rapid industrial expansion in Germany starting in 1871) by Friedrich Ratzel (1876) and Friedrich Bon- stedt (1882), the political and social aspects fell by the wayside, as these accounts chiefly targeted the bourgeois reader. The travel report was now no longer considered a medium for promoting political and social understanding. At the turn of the twentieth century, the phenomenon of americanism emerges, in which the United States is either admired or criticized as the country of the future (Wilhelm von Polenz, 1903) and the “Land of unlimited opportunity” (Ludwig Max Goldberger, 1903), stemming from America’s military and economic clout. At the same time the travel literature on America from the Wil- helminian period, such as by Ernst von Wolzogen (Der Dichter in Dollarica [The Poet in Dollarica], 1912), demonstrated national self-importance and a feeling of superiority. This was partially rooted in the fact that many German authors visited the United States only for short periods. These tourist concerns were expressed in travel reports describing encounters with a foreign culture and differences in daily life. Kaleidoscopic snapshots were created in descriptive reportages. Arthur Holitscher’s Amerika heute und morgen (America Today and Tomorrow, 1912) was typical for the unsystematic method of perception and representation. Various works followed in its wake, such as Alfred Kerr’s Amerika (1914), Newyork und London (1923), and Yankee Land (1925); Egon Erwin Kisch’s ironic portrayal in Paradies Amerika (Paradise America, 1930); and Ernst Toller’s Quer durch (Crossing Through, 1930). The cultural exchange thus intended also functioned in the Weimar Republic at a cultural-political level, such as in successful anthologies of American literature (Claire Goll, Die Neue Welt [The New World], 1921).
During the Grunderzeit, the image of Germany as perceived by American travelers changed after the Franco-German war of1870. The appreciation of Protestant culture and the obliging sympathy for cozy German family life (John Ross Browne, An American Family in Germany, 1866; Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, 1869) was tarnished by the criticism of the militarism and reckless arrogance of the German Empire as found in the works of the “moral realist” Henry James and W E. B. Du Bois (Crisis, 1916). In their eyes Germany developed into the puppet of pan-Germanism. The philosophy professors, who were still held in high regard in the nineteenth century, were made responsible for triggering this transformation, receiving part of the blame for World War I (George Santayana, Poultney Bigelow, Harold Frederic, Frederic Jessup Stimson). Despite the mediatory attempts of Hugo Munsterberg, whose studies endeavored to unveil the mechanisms leading to the formation of national stereotypes and revive the dialogue between Germany and the United States (American Traits, 1901; The Americans, 1904), and despite Germanophile authors (H. L. Mencken, Theodore Dreiser), the thoughtless comments of the German emperor regarding American politics made it impossible to reverse the demonization of Germany (William Roscoe Thayer, Germany vs. Civilisation, 1916). This led to the hate propaganda of the “Creel Committee,” which was gradually rescinded in the 1920s and 1930s. The Weimar Republic enjoyed political credit in the United States and reemerged as a travel destination (Sinclair Lewis, Louis Untermeyer), during which time the country’s romantic landscape was rediscovered (Thomas Wolfe). Above all, Berlin’s cosmopolitan flair and the capital’s popular culture (Joseph Hergesheimer, Berlin, 1932) became the leitmotifs of Germany’s modern image, described by expatriates and avant-garde elitists as decadent, morally depraved, and excessive (Robert McAlmon, Josephine Herbst).
The beginnings of National Socialism were barely detected by some authors on their travels, which was not perceived as blindness until considerably later (Kay Boyle, Thomas Wolfe, Kathrin Anne Porter, Walker Percy). The American reporters (Dorothy Thompson, I Saw Hitler, 1933; Edgar Ansel Mowrer, William L. Shirer, John Gunther) recognized the Fascist leanings of the Third Reich more clearly. Sinclair Lewis extrapolated them in his dystopia It Cant Happen Here (1935), superimposing them on the United States. This self-reflection (Albert Maltz, The Cross and the Arrow, 1944) was, however, retracted in favor of a revival of the image of Germany from World War I, fueled by the continuing arrival of emigrants to the United States (Louis Bromfield).
Led by the political science study of Franz Neumann (Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of Social Nationalism, 1942), the analyses by the emigrants in the United States molded Germany’s image in the 1930s and 1940s. The authors-in-exile made a significant contribution to the cultural transfer that, though tense and full of misconceptions, was in fact highly effective. Innumerable reports reversed the critical stance toward America (Thomas Mann, Vom kommenden Sieg der Demokratie, Dieser Friede [ The Coming Victory of Democracy, This Peace], 1938), which was widespread in the Weimar Republic and still shared by many. The bourgeois authors saw America as their savior and the land of the political future. This also applied to Georg Kaiser who sang the United States’ praises in Napoleon in New Orleans (1938), although he was refused political asylum in the United States and wrote from his external perspective in Switzerland. Reports of journeys into exile and everyday life in the authors’ new surroundings (Oskar Maria Graf, Flucht ins Mittelmaβige [Flight to Mediocrity], 1959; Carl Zuckmayer, Amerika ist anders [America Is Different], 1948; Walter Mehring, Die verlorene Bibliothek [The Lost Library], 1952) as well as the literary considerations (Hans Sahl, Die Wenigen und die Vielen [The Few and the Many], 1959; Stefan Heym, Kreuzfahrer von heute [Crusader?], 1950; Thomas Mann, Joseph und seine Bruder [Joseph and his Brothers], 1948) primarily constituted explorations of the authors’ own lives, reflections on Nazi Germany, and debates about the political and aesthetic positions within the emigrant groups, such that America and its society are barely featured. The fascination for and appreciation of America and a simultaneous preoccupation with the author’s own life climaxed in Klaus Mann’s English-language autobiography The Turning Point (1942).
After 1945 an exchange, promoted by cultural politics, took place between American and German authors. Numerous authors were invited to readings at U.S. universities, and subsequently recorded their experiences in reports. The glorification and admiration of and gratitude for America’s generosity (Josef Enerle, Die Reise nach Amerika [The Journey to America], 1949; Bruno Erich, Kannst Du Europa vergessen? [Can You Forget Europe?], 1952) were contrasted with humorous and more critical reports (Rudolf Hagelstange, How do you like America? 1957; Wolfgang Koeppen, Die Fruchte Europas. Amerika westwarts—Amerika ostwarts [The Fruit of Europe. America Westwards—America Eastwards], 1958, and Amerikafahrt [Journey to America], 1959; Hans Egon Holthusen, Indiana Campus, 1969). Ingeborg Bachmann, Horst Bienek, and Horst Kruger also embarked upon the obligatory trip to America, passing on their impressions of life in a democracy and a socially Darwinistic consumer society, while also emphasizing the architectural splendor and their yearning for America.
This was coupled with mounting criticism of American politics. In 1968, based on the cultural and industrial theories of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Hans Magnus Enzensberger accused the government of betraying the country’s founding myth. In an act of protest, Enzensberger left Wesleyan University for Cuba. The travel literature of this period moved the focus away from the landscape and cultural differences to the politicians and government issues. The politically motivated shift of America’s image also had an influence on Jurg Federspiel, who recorded his thoughts during his stay in Manhattan from 1967 through 1969 in a collection of diary notes, essays, and sceneries (Museum des Hasses [Museum ofHate], 1969). In the 1970s travelers to America also embarked upon autobiographical approaches in which they explored their inner selves during their travels (Peter Handke, Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied [Short Letter, Long Farewell], 1972; Langsame Heimkehr [Returning Home], 1979). This strain of travel literature was characterized by journeys in search of one’s own subjectivity (Ulrich Pothast, Die Reise nach Las Vegas [Journey to Las Vegas], 1977; Max Frisch, Montauk, 1975). Martin Walser, who taught at several colleges from the 1950s onward, initially experienced America as a release from daily routines and then as a location for projecting his effusively felt idea of home. The year 1986 saw the appearance of Brandung (Breakers), Walser’s novel set in California, and his travel report Die Amerikareise (Travels in America), in which he attempts to understand a “feeling.”
This individualization of the American experience found in personal travel reports has continued into the twenty-first century, and is particularly evident among authors who grew up in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and used their newly found freedom to travel to America, the country of their dreams. This prompted the creation of travel reports (Adolf Endler, Warnung vor Utah [Warning about Utah], 1996) and fiction in which clashes with a foreign culture were portrayed as an enrichment of one’s experience and perception (Angela Krauss, Milliarden neuer Sterne [Billions of New Stars], 1999; Antje Ravic Strubel, Ofene Blende [Open Blind], 2001). These were diametrically opposed to the politically motivated travel reports written during the GDR, such as those of the emigrant Walter Kaufmann (American Encounter, 1966; Hoffnung unter Glas [Hope under Glass], 1967) and Gunter Kunert, who, in his travel notes entitled Der andere Planet (The Other Planet, 1976), searched for the reasons for what he perceived as America’s departure from its ideals.
Whereas many German authors travel to the United States, the visits by American authors to Germany are relatively sparse. This chiefly stems from the modernization processes that gained momentum in Germany after the economic miracle and as a result of the cold war, which are also perceived as forms of americanization. Because many German products are exported to the United States, the incentive to discover something foreign is not as great. Typically Walter Abish’s How German Is It (1980) primarily comprised a debate on German stereotypes. This is exacerbated by the skepticism toward Germany that prevailed in America after World War II and also by German reunification (Henry Miller). Despite academic exchange programs (James William Fulbright), guidebooks, and foreign correspondents, Germany’s post-1945 image in America largely remains fixed on National Socialism and the Third Reich (Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, 1973). This can be attributed to the origins of the majority of texts, written in the main by GIs describing their impressions as occupying soldiers (David Davidson, John Hawkes, James Cross, James McGovern, William Gardner Smith; Thomas Berger, Crazy in Berlin, 1958).
The far-reaching consequences a trip can have is illustrated by Kay Boyle. After struggling with herself, she followed her husband to Marburg as a journalist where she described everyday life and the treatment of history in narrative texts (The Smoking Mountains, 1951). The cultural exchange, above all the memory of author Wolfgang Borchert and her friendship with journalist Siegfried Maruhn, found expression in her novel Generation without Farewell (1960), in which she enhanced her previously negative image of Germany. As in the case of Boyle, Kurt Vonnegut found Germany a stimulus for self-reflection, triggering also an analysis of American history and society (Slaughterhouse-Five, 1969; Bluebeard, 1987).
Claude D. Conter
See also Adorno, Theodor; American Students at German Universities; Bancroft, George; Bismarck’s Anti-Socialist Law; Duden, Gottfried; Everett, Edward; Films and Television (American) After World War II, Germany in; Follen, Charles; Fulbright Program; Fuller, Margaret; GIs in West Germany; Hecker, Friedrich; Heym, Stefan; Horkheimer, Max; Intellectual Exile; Kapp, Friedrich; Kisch, Egon Erwin; Lewis, Sinclair; Lieber, Francis; Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth; Mann, Thomas; Munsterberg, Hugo; Neumann, Franz L.; Paul Wilhelm, Duke of Wurttemberg; Ratzel, Friedrich; Ruppius, Otto; Schmidel, Ulrich; Schurz, Carl; Sealsfield, Charles; Seume, Johann Gottfried; Sigel, Franz; Staden, Hans; Steuben, Frederick Wilhelm von; Taylor, (James) Bayard; Thompson, Dorothy; Ticknor, George; Transcendentalism; Twain, Mark; Weitling, Wilhelm
References and Further Reading
Adams, Willi Paul. Deutschland und Amerika. Perzeption und historische Realitdt. Berlin: Colloquium-Verlag, 1985.
Brenner, Peter J. Reisen in die Neue Welt. Die Erfahrung Nordamerikas in deutschen Reise- und Auswanderungsberichten. Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1991.
Galinsky, Hans. Amerikanisch-deutsche Sprach- und Literaturbeziehungen. Frankfurt am Main: Athenaum, 1972.
Hammond, Theresa Mayer. American Paradise. German Travel Literature from Duden to Kisch. Heidelberg: Winter, 1980.
Mikoletzky, Juliane. Die deutsche Amerika- Auswanderung des 19. Jahrhunderts in der zeitgendssischen fiktionalen Literatur. Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1988.
Neuber, Wolfgang. Fremde Welt im europdischen Horizont. Zur Topik der deutschen Amerika-Reiseberichte in der fruhen Neuzeit. Berlin: Schmidt, 1991.
Ott, Ulrich. Amerika ist anders. Studien zum Amerika-Bild in deutschen Reiseberichten des 20. Jahrhunderts. Frankfurt am Main, Bern: Peter Lang, 1991.
Stowe, William W Going Abroad. European Travel in Nineteenth-Century American Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1994.
Zacharasiewicz, Waldemar. Das Deutschlandbild in der amerikanischen Literatur. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998.