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ABSTRACT
The essay discusses the transatlantic as well as the gendered perspectives on US American slavery in the works of two nineteenth-century German immigrant women writers, Therese Robinson (writing under the pseudonym Talvj, 1797–1870) and Mathilde Franziska Anneke (1817–1884). I will argue that German immigrant women were not only critical observers of the practice of slavery in the USA but they used antislavery discourses to negotiate German women’s efforts to assimilate to American culture. In nineteenth-century transatlantic culture, German immigrant women engaged in and commented upon intersecting discourses on antislavery, Americanization, and womanhood. With regard to discussions of gender, race, and slavery in nineteenth-century US American fiction, writings of German immigrant women or literary representations of German immigration to the USA have rarely been considered. This essay thus shows how fiction written by German immigrant women expands the scope of US American antislavery literature. Its discussion of two lesser known German immigrant women authors contributes to the research on German American literary culture and transatlantic women’s history.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank Heike Raphael-Hernandez, Mita Banerjee, Matthias Oppermann, and the peer-reviewers for their valuable comments on previous versions of this essay.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Pia Wiegmink is Assistant Professor in American Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany. Together with Birgit M. Bauridl, she heads an international research network on “Cultural Performance in Transnational American Studies,” which is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). She received her doctorate from the University of Siegen (2010) and has been visiting scholar at Georgetown University (2012). She is author of two monographs, Theatralität und Öffentlicher Raum [Theatricality and Public Space], Tectum 2005, and Protest EnACTed, Winter 2011 and one co-edited volume, Approaching Transnational America in Performance, Lang 2016. In her current research, Pia Wiegmink examines the interdependencies between abolitionist narratives, transnationalism, and conceptions of personhood in nineteenth-century US America.
Notes
1 Translated in Foner, Humboldt on Slavery, 24.
2 Quoted in Neils Conzen, “Invention of Ethnicity,” 140.
3 Reprinted in Wagner, Was die Deutschen, 22. All translations from German into English are mine.
4 I define German American women writers as women of German descent, who published literature in and about the United States, and who lived in the United States for an extended period of time.
5 Raphael-Hernandez, “Deutsche Verwicklungen,” 35.
6 Efford, German Immigrants; Honeck, Revolutionists; Keil, “German Immigrants”; Levine, The Spirit of 1848.
7 US American antislavery literature is often used as an umbrella term for a broad variety of literature that criticizes the practice of slavery. As James G. Basker observes in his introduction to the Library of America’s American Anti-slavery Literature: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation:
The authors themselves are strikingly diverse: white and black, male and female, southern and northern, wealthy and poor, educated city dwellers and rural autodidacts, amateurs as well as professional writers. It is the democratic inclusiveness of this literature, almost as much as its revolutionary content, that marks it as so surprising and worthy of our attention. (Basker, xxx)
8 Honeck, Revolutionists, 104–136.
9 Wallach, “Talvj,” 284.
10 See, for instance, Blackett, Antislavery Wall; Taylor, British and American Abolitionists; Meer, Uncle Tom Mania; Sweeney, Frederick Douglass.
11 Studies on this topic are, for instance, McDaniel, Problem of Democracy; Dal Lago, American Slavery, Atlantic Slavery; Gemme, Domesticating Foreign Struggles.
12 McDaniel, Democracy, 13.
13 In this essay, I will refer to this period as the German Vormärz. Although historians disagree about the exact beginning of this period, it is consensus that the Vormärz was a period during which German intellectuals lobbied for German nationalism and liberalism, which resulted in a series of several attempts to ignite a revolution, such as the political mass demonstration known as the Hambacher Fest in 1832, the attack of the Frankfurt police quarters in 1833, known as the Frankfurter Wachensturm, and finally the Märzrevolution (March Revolution) of 1848/1849, which aimed at achieving German unification. See, Sieber, “Vormärz,” 1284–1285. Many of the political agitators of these revolutions fled to the United States. For more information on the impact of German 1848ers in the USA, see, for instance, Honeck, We are the Revolutionists; Levine, The Spirit of 1848.
14 Mehring, Frank. “Karl (Charles) Follen,” 59–62.
15 Hochbruck, “Schurz, Carl,” 953.
16 Honeck, Revolutionists, 42–70.
17 Douglass, “Adopted Citizens,” also quoted in Keil, “German Immigrants,” 157.
18 Quoted in Foner, Humboldt on Slavery, 10.
19 In 1856, the American supporter of slavery, John S. Thrasher, published a translation of Humboldt’s Essai politique sur l’île de Cuba but omitted chapter seven, in which Humboldt harshly attacks Cuban slavery. As Foner observes, “the major reason why Thrasher translated Humboldt’s work into English was to furnish information about an island which pro-slavery forces in the United States were plotting to annex.” See Foner, Humboldt on Slavery, 18–19. Humboldt not only opposed the annexation of Cuba as another slave state but also harshly criticized Thrasher’s translation. The exchange between Thrasher and Humboldt was printed in The New York Times and, as Laura Dassow Walls observes, “Thrasher’s act of silencing actually helped Humboldt’s view ring loud and clear across the United States, and from then on he was honored by antislavery activists as their ally and sympathizer.” See Walls, Passage to Cosmos, 206.
20 Ibid., 208; see also Parker, “Tribute to Humboldt,” 110–111.
21 Although the German Americanist Maria Diedrich gives evidence of Assing’s pivotal contributions to US American antislavery discourses and chronicles Assing’s personal and professional relationship with Frederick Douglass, Assing’s work is largely absent from US scholarship on American antislavery. See, Diedrich, Love.
22 Humboldt, quoted in Sachs, Humboldt Current, 6.
23 Ibid.
24 Rippley, “German Americans.”
25 Conzen, “Invention of Ethnicity,” 138.
26 See, for instance, Armand Strubberg’s Schwarzes Blut oder Sklaverei in den Vereinigten Staaten, 1862; Adolf Douai’s Fata Morgana, 1858, or Friedrich Gerstäcker’s In America: A Picture of American Life in Recent Times, 1872.
27 Wallach, “German Immigrant Women,” 100.
28 Ibid.
29 Harzig, “Gender, Transatlantic Space,” 168.
30 Ibid.
31 Haeussler, “Therese Robinson,” 292.
32 Piepke, Mathilde Franziska Anneke, 8.
33 For an extended list (that, however, does not include Clara Berens, Louise Weil, and Marie Anna Weisselberg), see the Appendix II in Stuecher, Twice Removed, 211–212. For a very recent discussion of German-speaking women authors who wrote about the Americas in the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, see also McFarland and James, eds. Sophie Discovers Amerika. In addition to Talvj and Anneke of the above-mentioned authors, Clara Berens, Louise Weil, and Maria Weisselberg voiced strong antislavery sentiments in their literary works. See, for example, Clara Berens’s novel: Aus vergangenen Tagen: Eine Erzählung aus der Sklavenzeit (1906); Louise Weil’s short story “Der deutsche Sklavenhalter” (1865), or Marie Anna Weisselberg’s poems (published in Vines, “Pioneer Poet”). Although not a writer of fiction, Ottilie Assing should be mentioned in this context as well. Not only did the journalist publish numerous articles that attacked slavery but she also translated Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Live of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845) into German.
34 American scholar of German literature, Martha Kaarsberg Wallach, is among the few scholars who are familiar with Talvj’s work and who published several articles on her work. Jeffrey Sammons has a brief (10-page) ‘excursus’ on The Exiles in his Ideology, Mimesis, Fantasy. Along with Mathilde Anneke’s fiction and the work of Kathinka Sutro-Schücking, Talvj’s novels are also discussed in Dorothea Stuecher, Twice Removed. For a biographical reference, see Haeussler, “Therese Robinson.”
35 Wallach, “Talvj,” 284.
36 Nikola R. Pribíc provides a detailed overview of Talvj’s publications in the USA and in Germany: From the 1830s onwards until her death in 1870, Talvj published essays on Slavic Languages, Teutonic, Slavic, French, and Spanish poetry and songs as well as articles on Russian serfdom (which she compared to American slavery), and essays on the legend of Doctor Faustus and Charles the Great (Pribíc, “Talvj in America,” 599–605).
37 Among these works are a 700-page Geschichte der Colonisation von New England (Brockhaus, 1847), a translation of an essay on Native American languages, an essay on the Shakers, and a travel report on Virginia appeared in German serial magazines such as Westermann’s Monatshefte (Pribíc, “Talvj in America,” 603–605).
38 The author, Talvj, occupies a mediating position here. For each edition, Talvj complemented her texts with footnotes, explaining important habits or events for respective audiences. In the German edition of her novel, she explains, for example, the patterns of formal address in America (Talvj, Auswanderer, vol. 1, 128), idiomatic American expressions such as “Uncle Sam” (180), the “domestic institution of Slavery” (180), or comments on the popularity of original German songs (Talvj, Auswanderer, vol. 2, 94). Vice versa, in the American edition, the author provides brief comments on events in German history, such as the “Frankfort Conspiracy” (Talvj, Exiles, 33) and occasional other explanatory notes. Subsequent references to the English translation of the novel will appear in textual parentheses.
39 Clotilde’s antislavery sentiment is, however, at times, contrasted with rather problematic and at times, even racist depictions of African Americans. Upon her rescue on the coast of Florida, one of the African American slaves who helps the shipwrecked is described in a distorted, stereotypical way that emphasized thick lips and white teeth (43) and when Clotilde watches the passersby in the streets of New York, she notices “an African face” which she describes as “belong[ing] to the monkey tribe rather than to the human race” (304). Yet, in another instance, Clotilde perceives the sight of a black mother, who is described as a “tall, noble figure,” and her four children “with deep compassion” and as a “heart-rending group” (173).
40 To give just one example, chapter 21, entitled “Domestic Scenes,” begins with the following observation: “And so the goal was reached, and our lovers had once more a home. Hubert was for the first time master of a house – Clotilde again at the head of a household” (330).
41 Stuecher, Twice Removed, 68.
42 This is particularly prevalent in chapters 15–18 in which Franz Hubert recounts his story, presents his views of American gender relations, and introduces Clotilde to the life story of his father.
43 One aspect that I have thus far neglected in my analysis is that of interracial cooperation. Despite the fact that Talvj presents Clotilde as an ardent critic of slavery, the author does not attribute her German protagonist any interest in African Americans. In addition, Talvj denies African American characters any agency. The few African American characters that appear in the novel are stock characters who are presented in a stereotypical and racist manner (43–44, 304) and Virginia’s slave Phyllis, who is at least equipped with wit and individual character traits, cares more about her mistress’s red dress than freedom (158). The novel’s explicit antislavery sentiment functions first and foremost to emphasize German moral superiority and is presented as an issue that is only discussed among white characters.
44 This impression is furthered by another scene in which, as literary scholar Jeffrey Sammons observes, “Talvj has absorbed American prejudices.” See Sammons, Mimesis, 206. In the novel, Clotilde watches “[f]rom the windows of the palatial Astor House,” observes the crowd in the streets, and makes several nativists remarks. Rather than expressing solidarity with other immigrants, Clotilde denounces the Irish as “wild-looking, bandit like fellow saunters” (304), looks down upon the newly arrived German immigrants in their “provincial costumes” (304), and comments upon the “insolent beggar children of all nations” (305).
45 Dorothea Stuecher comments on Franz Hubert’s attraction to Virginia as follows: “In the case of Hubert’s erotic cum cultural temptation with Virginia Castleton, the author played on the standard immigrant polarization of German and American women to cast the young woman [Virginia] as the incarnation of the seducations of the New World” (Twice Removed, 66). Talvj heightens this dangerous lure of the exotic woman even more as Franz Hubert is actually on the verge of repeating the sin of his father: Hubert’s father had cheated on this German wife with an American woman, lived with her, and fathered children with her until he regretted his unfaithfulness and returned to his German wife. In a letter to his son, Hubert, he confessed: “I felt like a sinner who kneels before the image of saint” (Talvj, The Exiles, 268). However, in the end, Hubert is killed in a duel by his half brother, Alonzo (the son his father had with the American woman); Clotilde has a miscarriage and, not able to live without her beloved Hubert, dies. As Stuecher concludes, “The New World has exacted its dues from those who had dared to trifle with its attractions, and Clotilde’s dream of maintaining a cultural island in the midst was revealed as impotent and illusory” (Twice Removed, 67).
46 Wagner, “German-American Press,” 12.
47 Bergquist, Daily Life, 159–160.
48 Ibid., 160.
49 Merrill, “Serial Novel,” 16. Like Merrill and Wagner, Patricia Herminghouse and Brent Peterson, and more recently Lorie A. Vanchena emphasize the importance to re-assess German American serial literature. Patricia Herminghouse, for example, draws attention to the fact that most German American novels only appeared in book form after they had been serialized in the German American newspapers (“Radicalism,” 306). Aspects like its serial character, its language other than English, and the often ascribed low-brow character of this genre of literature contributed to the fact that today, many works of German American fiction are buried in the archives. Peterson, “How and Why,” 91. See also Vanchena, “Taking Stock.”
50 Brinkmann, “Illinois Staatsanzeiger,” 541.
51 Dorothea Stuecher labeled the collaboration between Anneke and Mary Booth a “unique cooperative effort” […]. As they shared in the financial and child care-responsibilities of their mutual household, they also collaborated in their literary activities […]. See Stuecher, Twice Removed, 141. See also Mischa Honeck’s detailed discussion of this relationship, Honeck, Revolutionists, 104–136.
52 In a recent discussion of this novella, Denise M. Della Rossa writes that the Gilmores and the Wallensteins are “two German immigrant families” (“Anneke’s Novella,” 83). This is a profound misinterpretation of the novella. The basic character constellation is one of a (re)evolving bond between the American Gilmore and the German immigrant Wallenstein which will be continued by the marriage between Gilmore’s daughters and Wallenstein’s sons and explicitly identifies Gilmore as an American from South Carolina who studied in Tübingen, Germany, before he returned to the United States (Anneke, Uhland, 60). Subsequent references to the novella will appear in textual parentheses.
53 Brister, “Adelsverein.”
54 Struve, Germans & Texans, 47.
55 Anneke situates her fictional account of the German plantation Uhland within the historical events of the Civil War. Here, she turns Wallenstein into a Union colonel who commanded the First Louisiana Native Guard, a colored regiment that was – except for some notable exceptions – headed by white men.
56 Anneke often refers to the shared moral values of abolition and humanism in the novella. For example, in chapter 19, there is a dialogue between several pro-slavery Southerners who make fun of Wallenstein: “‘He stands on the platform of German Humanism.’ ‘Well, this might be even better than the abolitionist platform’ replied the chivalrous Southerner. ‘Alas, much, much worse!’” (148). [“‘Der steht auf der Plattform der deutschen Humanität.’ ‘Nun, die ist womöglich noch schöner, wie die Abolitionisten-Plattform.’ ‘Hoho, viel, viel schlimmer!’”]
57 Stuecher, Twice Removed, 74, 72.
58 What is, nevertheless, disturbing in this scene is that Anneke refers to the Native American characters as a “horde” (185), their respective identity and tribal affiliation is not further explored as they are merely referred to as “Indianer” (“Native Americans”); they are not allowed to engage in direct speech in the novella and as stereotypical depictions of Noble Savages; they are in sync with nature; and they do not enter or interfere with the domestic sphere of the Uhland house but retreat back into the wilderness (185). However, in contrast the stereotypical representation of Native American characters, most of Gilmore’s slaves are depicted as highly educated persons. Not only can they read and write but they are also able to speak several languages (first and foremost German) and, like their master, they are fond of German culture (see, for example 58).
59 See also Stuecher’s discussion of this scene (Twice Removed, 78).
60 Stuecher, Twice Romoved, 141.
61 The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed the newly formed states Kansas and Nebraska to decide whether they want to join the United States as slave states or free states. As a result, Kansas became contested territory and the scene of violent confrontations. Abolitionists encouraged antislavery advocates to settle in Kansas and pro-slavery Southerners sought to support the spread of slavery in the state.
62 A good example of a “tragic mulatta”-character in American antislavery literature is Lydia Maria Child’s short story “The Octoroon” (1842), for a further discussion of the character of the “tragic mulatta,” see Sollors, Neither Black Nor White, 220–246.
63 Wallach, “German Immigrant Women,” 100.