Objekt des Monats
Jedes Objekt in der Sammlung des Deutschen Auswandererhauses erzählt eine ganz persönliche Auswanderungs- oder Einwanderungsgeschichte. In dieser Rubrik stellen wir Ihnen jeden Monat ein anderes Objekt vor – eine Fotografie, ein Dokument oder ein persönliches Erinnerungsstück.
October 2015
Literature for political refugees, Ferdinand Freiligrath’s complete works in the USA
Freiligrath, Ferdinand: Complete Works. Complete Original Edition. 6 in 3 volumes. New York: Friedrich Gerhard, 1858 – 1859.
Historical Context
From 1728 to 1830, more than 3100 German-language titles were printed on the North American continent. The center of German-language book production shifted from the rural printing presses of Pennsylvania to New York starting in the 1830s. During the concurrent mass migration of Germans, it was the newcomers who dictated the demand for German-language books. It was only when immigration sharply declined in the mid-1890s that publishers had to adapt to a readership that had not grown up in Germany. During World War I, the demand for books in the enemy language fell. The temporary revival of production for immigrants by German exile publishing houses during Nazism remained an interlude.
Short Biography
Ferdinand Freiligrath, the poet born in Detmold in 1810, sang of the “emigrants” to the USA at 22, but never followed them himself. Even when he was wanted by the police in Prussia for his political poems during the 1848 Revolution, he went no further than London in exile. As the “poet of ’48”, his fame nonetheless reached the “New World”.
It was particularly facilitated by the political refugees who sought to escape persecution in the USA after the failure of the revolution. Although the ’48ers’ represented only a small group in terms of numbers, they nevertheless had a significant influence: Educated and engaged, they held teaching positions at universities, taught in schools, filled public offices, founded newspapers and learned societies, or ran social institutions.
Ferdinand Freiligrath was able to return to Germany from his London exile twenty years after the start of the revolution. By then, he was no longer a revolutionary. He welcomed the German Empire of 1871 with stormy ‘Hurrah, Germania’ songs. When he died in 1876 in Bad Cannstatt near Stuttgart – having avoided Prussia – he was honored with a corresponding grave monument from ‘the German people’ in the form of a colossal bust.
Significance of the object
Even those who emigrate with empty hands take something with them: their language. And those who have learned to read in it long not only for the familiar sound of the language but also for the accustomed script. Many German emigrants to North America felt the same way. From the early 18th century to the mid-20th century, there was hardly a title that was not published for them or their descendants: from the Bible to the ‘Communist Manifesto’, from Goethe’s ‘Faust’ to the ‘Trumpeter of Säckingen’.
Since the 1830s, the practice had been established in the USA to cheaply reprint books from continental German publishers. American copyright law facilitated this reprint, much to the annoyance of publishers and writers in the ‘Old World’. By the beginning of the 1850s, when the immigration of the ’48ers’ began, the reprinting of entire editions had just reached its peak in the ‘New World’.
The German-American publisher Friedrich (Frederick) Gerhard also participated in this venture. Relying on a high demand, he published a collection of the complete works of Ferdinand Freiligrath in 1858. He even noted the author’s explicit permission. However, as a contemporary reported, the ‘Freiligrath’ was ‘too expensive (7 ½ dollars) to be sold in accordance with its great popularity.’
Do You Also Have …
… a story of emigration or immigration in your family that you would like to share with the German Emigration Center together with the related objects and documents for its collection? Then please contact Dr. Tanja Fittkau by phone at +49 471 / 90 22 0 – 0
or by e-mail at: t.fittkau@dah-bremerhaven.de