7 - Disappearing Act: Felicitas Hoppe’s Hoppe and Australian Myths

Summary

Introduction

IN THE SECOND CHAPTER of Felicitas Hoppe's 2012 bogus autobiography- cum-travel novel, Hoppe, we learn how the biographical subject, “Hoppe,” encounters a historical German-Australian figure, the explorer and scientist Ludwig Leichhardt (1813–48?). The iconic Leichhardt is well known within Australian culture and has given his name to suburbs, streets, and more besides. Historian Darrell Lewis has even recently described him as one of the most famous mythical figures from the Australian past. In Germany, on the other hand, commemoration is muted and primarily located in Lusatia (Brandenburg) where Leichhardt was born and spent his early years. Though sometimes compared to Alexander von Humboldt, Leichhardt died young. In the words of one of the characters in Hoppe, he is the possessor of a quintessential “deutsche[r] Entdeckerschicksal des 19. Jahrhunderts” (nineteenthcentury German explorer's fate). In Australia, Leichhardt is famous for being the first European to travel, with Indigenous and non-Indigenous companions, from Moreton Bay (near present-day Brisbane) to Port Essington (in the Northern Territory). However he is also famous for completely disappearing—at least from non-Indigenous sight—on a later attempt to overland to the west coast of Australia, in what was an all but impossible mission through arid country.

In Felicitas Hoppe's novel, the protagonist “Hoppe” is alerted to Leichhardt when the crew of the ship on which she is traveling from Canada to Australia give her a German edition of Leichhardt's 1847 Port Essington Journal. In Adelaide (South Australia), where “Hoppe” then spends a decade in the 1970s and 1980s going to school and studying music, she engages more deeply with this figure. This starts when she writes “das mittlerweile legendäre Buch L” (Hoppe, 135; the now legendary Book L), a book that has never been published, if indeed the real Felicitas Hoppe ever did write it. The novel's extended gloss of Buch L indicates that “Hoppe” wrote it while inspired by the figures who went out searching for the missing German naturalist.