The American Image of Germany Set Forth in Nineteenth-Century Travel Books

This dissertation has been 64-9580 microfilmed exactly as received MURBE, Hans Joachim, 1921- THE AMERICAN IMAGE OF GERMANY SET FORTH IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY TRAVEL BOOKS. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1964 Language and Literature, general University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan Copyright by Bane Joachim Mftrbe 1964 THE AMERICAN IMAGE OP GERMANY SET FORTH IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY TRAVEL BOOKS DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Hans Joachim M&rbe The Ohio State University 1964 Approved by A d v iser Department of English VITA June 4} 1921 Born - Mittenwalde, Mark (Germany) 1939 . Abitur - Gynasium, K&nigs Wusterhansen 1940 . Student - University of Giessen 1941-1942 M ilitary service - Africa Corps 1942-1946 Prisoner of war - Canada, England 1947-1950 Student - University of Mainz 1951 . Teacher - Gymnasium, Alzey Rhine Hesse 1951-1952 Assistant - Iycle de Gargons, Nice 1952-1953 Instructor - Ashland College, Ashland, Ohio 1953-1957 Graduate assistant - The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1957-1960. Assistant instructor - The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1960-1964. Instructor - University of Vermont Burlington, Vermont FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English Studies in Old and Middle English. Professors Horst Oppel and Francis Utley Studies in the Nineteenth Century. Professors Horst Oppel and Richard D. A ltick. Studies in American Literature. Professors William Charvat and Claude Simpson. ii TABLE OP CGNTHfTS Chapter Page I THB DISCOVERY OP GERMANY IN THE 1820'S AND THE FORMATION. OF.THE AMERICAN IMAGE OP GERMANY. ............................ 1 I I THB AMERICAN VIEW OP GERMANY'S POLITICAL CONDITION............................................... 67 I I I AMERICAN ATTITUDES TOWARD GERMAN CIUSTOMS AND MANNERS............................ .123 IV THE AMERICAN VIEW OF GERMAN MORALITY. 159 V CONFLICTING AMERICAN OPINIONS OP GERMAN CULTURE ................................. 204 APPENDIX: SOME OBSERVATIONS UPON THE INFLUENCE OP TRAVEL BOOKS ON LITERATURE....................................... 242 BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................................................. 250 ill CHAPTER I THE DISCOVERY OR GERMANY IN THE l8 2 0 ‘S AND THE FORMATION OR THE AMERICAN IMAGE OR GERMANY The travel books in which Americans of all degrees set dowri their views of nineteenth-century Germany have ■ long been neglected--and regrettably so. ^For, while most of them lack literary merit, these books demand attention because they promulgated remarkably unanimous responses to German p o l i t i c s , manners, custom s, and m orals and thus gave rise to distinct patterns of American attitudes toward Germany. To trace these patterns from their origin in the mid-1820's until about 1900 is the main purpose of this study. The power of travel books to form and to direct public opinion derived from the vogue of travel and from the popularity of travel writings. Lectures on travel belonged to the stock in trade of the lyceum. Serialized travel letters of “foreign correspondents'* entertained and instructed readers of newspapers and magazines all. over America. Travel books, many of which were but collections of such serials, sold by the tens of thou sands. Many appeared in reprint after reprint and remained in demand for years,.and even decades, though most of them are noW(forgotten. Like other travel writings, many books wholly or partly on Germany were read by generations of Americans and left a deep im- / , pression upon the public mind. Apart from their significance as an index of American opinion of Germany, these books are of con siderable interest because they reflect the image ■which Americans abroad cherished of their own coun try. Almost invariably, travel writers assured their readers of their loyalty to America; and yet, in look ing back from their German point of vantage, some of them questioned and even criticized certain'aspects of American manners, morals and institutions. Be sides, as I will show by W.D. Howelis1 Their Silver Wedding Journey, many of these books do deserve notice in literary history. They provided the background against which authors like Irving, Cooper, Longfellow, Melville, Howells, and even Twain set up images of 3 foreign countries, in a significant form somewhere be tween travel writing and fiction. The opening pages of this study afford a glance at the flourishing cultural relations between Colonial America and Germany and at the debt owed by the young re public to German scholarship and literature. This back ground information suggests the following three basic facts, which justify my undertaking this study. First of i all although a few Americans were familar with German thought and letters, this country did not' gain first-hand knowledge of Germany until the early nineteenth century. Second, neither the early intere.st in German Protestant ism, philosophy, and literature nor the much later in fluence of German-trained teachers and scholars accounted for the forming of conventional American attitudes toward Germany. Finally, notwit'hstanding wide interest in other cultural contacts between the two countries, scholars so far have virtually ignored the travel literature that shaped these patterns in the nineteenth century. The main purpose of this first chapter is to de scribe the conditions that produced and helped spread patterns of American attitudes toward Germany. Accord ingly, this chapter presents various facts about the beginnings of American travel in Germany and about the writings concerning this travel. It .describes the surge of interest in Germany which justifies our speak ing of the "discovery" of Germany eaibly in the nine teenth century. It also includes factual information about the improvements in the means of travel, about travel time, fares, and routes,’ and about the fam iliar ity with Germany which resulted from the sudden Ameri can concern with that hitherto "unknown" country during the second quarter of the century. This chapter also introduces the travelers whose writings are the sub ject of this study, describes the origins and circum stances of publication of these books, and, finally, explains the popularity of travel writings during the nineteenth century. Besides being important to this study, all of these facts deserve attention because they are bits of cultural history in their own right. To the best of my knowledge, they have never been presented elsewhere, perhaps because many of the travel books that I consulted are not really available. The German influence on America in various areas has long been recognized. Yet, contrary to the tradi tional view, German-American cultural relations flour- ii ished long before Madame de Stael*s De lAllemagne (1813) stirred a'group of young Harvard graduates to go to German universities. The influence reaches back to the seventeenth century, when a multitude of German books and papers crossed the Atlantic. Many of these, we know, could be found in the libraries of John Winthrop, Jr. and of the Mathers, and Cotton Mather even c a r rie d on an extended correspondence w ith a num ber of German Protestant leaders, among them August Hermann Francke, the great P ietist.1 The German in fluence was, moreover, by no means limited to religious thought. Pufendorf’s De Jure Naturae et Gentium (1672 ), for example, became one of the chief sources of eighteenth-century conceptions of natural law, and 2 thus of American democracy. ■^Henry August Pochmann, German Culture in America 1600-1900 (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1957), P. 19* 2Ibid., p. 46. It is true, however, that American interest in Germany surged in the early decades of the nineteenth it century. Madame de Stael's book reached America just at the right moment: the strong desire of men like Jefferson to raise the standards of higher education, by learning whatever lessons could be learned from Europe; the apparent consolidation of Europe after the Peace of Paris (1815); and the rapid improvement in - trans-Atlantic communications—all encouraged a group of young Americans to enroll in German universities, and above all at Gottingen. The story of some of these men has been told by O.W. Long in his Literary Pioneers (1935).3 Men like Ticknor, Cogswell, Bancroft—to name but a few—returned to teach and apply in America the method they had learned in Germany. Ticknor be- ' came the chief founder of the Boston Public Library. Cogswell reorganized the Harvard Library and planned and reorganized the Astor (later New York Public) ■^Orie William Long, Literary Pioneers: Early American Explorers of European Culture (Cam bridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1935). Library. Bancroft, with Prescott, Parkman, and others, reoriented American historiography according to the scientific, or philosophical, method of the Germans. His History of the United States X1834-1874) was widely acclaimed upon its publication and still is the most pppular of the older American histories. These "lit erary pioneers" as well as other early American stu dents in Germany—such as Robert Bridges Patton, George Henry Calvert, William Emerson, elder brother of Ralph Waldo, Henry Edwin Dwight, Henry Boynton Smith, and James Eliot Cabot—set an example for thousands of others.^ The effect which the ensuing pilgrimage to Germany exerted on American thought can hardly be measured. By the end of the century, as H.A. Poch- mann has pointed

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