Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/166

 578 Non-English Writings I paign, and subsequent to that the journey from Canada to Virginia, and thence several times back and forth to New York in the expectation of release from captivity. Among the mer- cenary soldiers stationed in Canada was the German poet J. G. Seume, who had been kidnapped by recruiting officers and forced into foreign military service against his will. Seume's autobiography, Mein Leben, records his experiences in America closing with 1784, and many of his best poems were inspired during this period, among them the ballad Der Wilde, which contains the oft-quoted phrase Europas ubertunchte Hoflich- keit, in antithesis to the blunt simplicity but genuine hospital- ity of nature's children. Newspapers in the German language declined in quality in the early nineteenth century until the coming of the political refugees of the thirties and forties, when increasing numbers of German immigrants created a demand for newspapers in their own language. Among the early foundations which extended their influence beyond the close of the nineteenth century were the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, founded in 1834; the Anzeiger des Westens (St. Louis), in 1835; and the Cincinnati Volksblatt, in 1836. The years succeeding the German revolution of 1848- 1849 brought a large number of liberal leaders to the United States, who founded new journals or infused new life into the old, and aided in shaping public opinion in favour of abolition and union. German travellers in the United States became more fre- quent in the second decade of the nineteenth century, and their books and stories were instrumental in accelerating and direct- ing the tide of German immigration. Thus Duden's Berichte iiber eine Reise nach den westlichen Staaten Nordamerikas und einen mehrjahrigen Aufenthalt am Missouri, 182 4.-27, started the great mass of German settlements on both banks of the Missouri River. Subsequently pamphlets and books on Texas and Wisconsin directed immigration to those states. To the travel literature' of the earlier periods belong the books of Fiirstenwarther (181 8), Gall (1822), Bemhard von Sachsen- Weimar (1828), Duden (1829, etc.). Von Raumer (1845), Buttner (1845), Loher (1847), Frobel (1853-58), and Busch (1854). Since then a host of others have appeared, ranging ' See Bibliography for titles.