6 - Mathilde Franziska Anneke's Anti-Slavery Novella Uhland in Texas (1866)

Summary

A volume on German-speaking women who wrote about the Americas would not be complete without a chapter on the German 1848ers. In both countries, the mid-nineteenth century was a time of social upheaval that constituted an important political, historical, and cultural turning point. While the German states were on the eve of a democratic revolution, legislative battles began in the United States to end slavery and fulfill the promise of becoming a country of free citizens. The participants in the German revolutions of 1848 demanded the establishment of a representative federal government, a constitution ratified by the people, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble, and a solution to the problems of social welfare. In the United States, radical pre–Civil War reformers sought, among other things, to educate the deaf and the blind, rehabilitate criminals, guarantee women's rights, and abolish slavery. Newly arrived in the United States, often exiled, forty-eighters found much to admire in American liberalism and its commitment to equality and social justice. Having been shut out of the political discourse in their home country, emigration to the United States offered them a second opportunity for social and political engagement. Among these immigrants were politically conscious, urban middle-class women who had been attracted to the German democratic movement's demand for political and social equality of all citizens.