Fredéric Armand Strubberg

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Fredéric Armand Strubberg (ca.1860)

Fredéric Armand Strubberg , also Friedrich Armand Strubberg , and Friedrich August Strubberg (born March 18, 1806 in Kassel , † April 3, 1889 in Altenhaßlau ) was a German traveler to America and a writer . Under the prenonym Armand, he published numerous adventure novels and youth stories set in North America and, alongside Friedrich Gerstäcker and Balduin Möllhausen, was an important representative of the German-language ethnographic social novel .

Life

Little is known about Strubberg's life before 1855, and especially his youth. Sources are missing, and the data that biographers have so far taken from his pseudo-autobiographical travelogues and novels are for the most part not verifiable.

Born as the son of a wealthy tobacco manufacturer in Kassel, Strubberg enjoyed an upper-class upbringing (among other things he learned to ride, fencing and shooting) and at the age of sixteen joined a Bremen trading company as a trainee in order to complete a commercial apprenticeship. There he fell in love in 1826 with Antoinette Sattler, the daughter of the businessman Johann Gottfried Sattler (1768–1823). He came to the United States for the first time in 1826 to evade prosecution over a duel with a rival for Antoinette's favor. In the 1830s Strubberg stayed again in Kassel and in 1841 went again to North America as a representative of European tobacco companies. There the Bremen event is said to have been repeated in the glamorous New York Society and this time ended with the death of the duel opponent. In order to evade the reach of the judiciary, Strubberg fled west, studied medicine in Louisville , according to his own statements, and allegedly obtained a doctorate in this subject. Whether he actually owned the fort on the Indian border and undertook the great expedition into the Rocky Mountains afterwards - as described in his book American Hunting and Travel Adventures , published in 1858 - is not verifiable - due to the chronological sequence, however, it is unlikely.

In mid-1846, Strubberg, who at that time was “Dr. Schubbert ”named the offer from the Association for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas to run the Friedrichsburg settlement founded in the same year as colonial director , but initially refused to accept this post. Otfried von Meusebach , at that time the association's general commissioner, convinced him by leasing the Nassau plantation, which also belonged to the association, for six years after the successful construction of Friedrichsburg. During Strubberg's one-year term of office there were repeated differences of opinion with von Meusebach, who removed Strubberg from his post in July 1847 and declared the lease null and void. Strubberg did not accept this and took possession of the plantation in October 1847. Meusebach's successor, Hermann Spieß , then commissioned the association's lawyer to take legal action accordingly. He urgently advised against a direct confrontation, but Spieß went to the plantation with an armed force on October 29. He later justified this procedure in court by saying that some of the people present there with Strubberg had - without Strubberg's knowledge - the intention to steal the slaves, which he wanted to prevent. There was an exchange of fire in which one participant was killed on both sides. One of those killed was the Swiss landscape painter Conrad Caspar Rordorf . In December 1847 the association sued for the surrender of the plantation, which was then confiscated and Strubberg was forced to leave it. In early 1848 Strubberg filed a counterclaim, and a settlement was reached in April: Strubberg waived all claims to the plantation for $ 3,000 in damages and left Texas for Camden , Arkansas, where he settled as a country doctor.

Stabbed in the eye by a poisonous insect while hunting, the impending loss of his eyesight led him back to Germany in 1854, where he sought healing in several places, including Hanover , Marburg and Bad Langensalza , and began his writing. In 1860 he settled in Kassel and shared an apartment with his younger sister Emilie. In 1866 he married his childhood sweetheart Antoinette Sattler, not knowing that she had spent most of her life in a mental institution. Shortly after the wedding, Antoinette fell again into mental derangement and died soon afterwards. In the seventies, Strubberg worked as a legal advisor for Prince Wilhelm von Hessen-Philippsthal-Barchfeld in addition to his literary work . The prince had sued against the confiscation of the entails property of the House of Hesse by the state of Prussia in 1866. Strubberg wrote several anonymous leaflets and newspaper articles for him, in which he presented the prince's legal position and promoted his demand. Strubberg had one of these leaflets distributed to the members of the two Hessian state chambers. This led in 1876 to an indictment of "contempt for the authorities", the subsequent process ended in two instances with an acquittal. In August 1885 Strubberg moved to Altenhaßlau near Gelnhausen , which today belongs to Linsengericht , where he died in 1889. His grave in the Gelnhausen cemetery no longer exists today. The grave slab was brought to Erfurt after the cemetery was closed in 1957 and is now lost. In August 2010 a memorial plaque for Strubberg was put up in Gelnhausen.

plant

Fabric and shape

Strubberg is best known for his twenty or so adventure novels , some of which are pseudo-autobiographical, published between 1858 and 1878 , romanticizing travelogues and youth stories , most of which are based on the southwest of what is now the United States . If the early works such as American Hunting and Travel Adventures (1858), Bis in die Wildniß (1858) or At the Indian Border (1859) still have an autobiographical touch, they often point against the background of historical events such as the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), the American Civil War (1861–1865) or the San Antonio Council House Fight and the resulting Great Raid of 1840 later works clearly show the typical elements of the classic Wild West and adventure novel and partly also of the mystery and sensational novel on. Based on his experiences as colonial director of Friedrichsburg, Strubberg also addressed the experiences of German emigrants in America several times in his works. In many of his works he showed understanding for the Native Americans who opposed the advance of the white settlers and was critical of the slave-owning system in the American southern states. In the late phase of his writing career, Strubberg also tried his hand at being a dramatist , but his five plays went largely unnoticed , as did his few lyrical attempts.

effect

Despite intensive efforts, the author did not succeed in distributing his writings during his lifetime in a large complete edition printed in large numbers. Multiple changes of publisher and the assignment of the rights to his by far most popular works American Hunting and Travel Adventures and Carl Scharnhorst made the publication of a work edition financially unattractive for any publisher. As a result, many of Armand's books were soon barely accessible in public libraries, and the late works in particular are now rare, even in large private special collections of German-language travel and adventure literature. Only the Hunting and Travel Adventure and Carl Scharnhorst - especially the latter heavily edited - were reissued several times until the first half of the 20th century. Since 2010, the so-called Marburg edition has been published, a twenty-volume critical edition .

Popular authors such as Charles Sealsfield (Karl Postl), Friedrich Gerstäcker, Balduin Möllhausen, Armand Strubberg and especially later Karl May had a decisive influence on the image of America in the German-speaking area until the first half of the 20th century. Even today, their works are important as cultural and historical testimonies beyond their entertainment character .

bibliography

First editions

The Americans in Mexico
The storm of San Antonio
  • Old and New Homeland (1859)
  • At the Indian border (1859)
  • Ralph Norwood (1860)
  • Slavery in America (1862)
  • Carl Scharnhorst. Adventures of a German Boy in America (1862, on title page: 1863)
  • The Leap from Niagara Trap (1864)
  • In Mexico (1865)
  • Sowing and Harvesting (1866)
  • Friedrichsburg, the colony of the German Princes' Association in Texas (1867)
  • From Armand's Frontierleben (1868)
  • In South Carolina and on the battlefield of Langensalza (1868)
  • The Quadrone (drama) (1869, revised 1885)
  • The man without poetry (drama) (1869, under the pseudonym Norwald) (1943 war loss)
  • The Croesus of Philadelphia (1870)
  • The Prince's Daughter (1872)
  • The old Spanish document (1872)
  • The Methodist Clergyman (1873)
  • Two Paths of Life (1873)
  • The kidnapped children. A Texas Tale for the Youth (1875)
  • Noble and civil. Novel from the life of Armand (1878)
  • Gustav Adolf (drama) (1882)
  • The free spirit (drama) (1883)
  • Life and death of the emperor Friedrich Barbarossa (play) (1886)

Marburg edition (critical work edition)

literature

  • Address book of Kassel and surroundings . Publishing house Boppenhausen, Kassel. 27.1860-52.1885.
  • Siegfried Augustin : Work article "Armand" , in: Friedrich Schegk (Hrsg.): Lexicon of travel and adventure literature. Meitingen 1988ff. (Supplementary work, loose-leaf collection), basic work December 1988. ISBN 978-3-89048-700-7
  • Preston Albert Barba: The Life and Works of Friedrich Armand Strubberg . o. O. [Philadelphia] 1913 (Americana Germanica, vol. 16). - Also ud T .: Friedrich Armand Strubberg , in: German American Annals. New Series Vol. X, Nos. 5 and 6 (1912), pp. 175-225; New Series Vol. XI., Nos. 1 and 2 (1913), pp. 3-142.
  • Wilhelm Bracksieck (ed.): Family tables Bracksieck-Huwendiek . Bremen 1931.
  • Ulf Debelius: Appendix to: Armand: American hunting and travel adventures from my life in the western Indian regions . Edited and appended by Ulf Debelius. 2nd edition Marburg 2011 (Armands Werke - Marburg Edition, Vol. I). ISBN 978-3-8288-2701-1
  • Complete directory of German-language literature (GV) 1700-1910 . Edited under the direction of Peter Geils and Willi Gorzny. Vol. 5: Anw-Arw. Munich 1979; Vol. 141: Stot-Stuc. Munich 1985.
  • Andreas Graf: Adventure and mystery. Studies on the structure and effect of the ethnographic social novels of Balduin Möllhausen (1825-1905) . Freiburg i. Br. 1991 (Rombach Wissenschaft - Litterae series, vol. 18). ISBN 3-7930-9078-7
  • James C. Kearney: Nassau Plantation. The Evolution of a Texas German Slave Plantation . Denton, Tex. 2010. ISBN 978-1-57441-286-4
  • Aiga Klotz: Children's and Youth Literature in Germany 1840-1950. Complete list of publications in German. Volume I (AF). Stuttgart 1990 ( Repertories on German literary history. Ed. By Paul Raabe , Vol. 11). ISBN 3-476-00702-2 .
  • Volker Klotz: Adventure Novels . Reinbek b. Hamburg 1989. ISBN 3-499-55479-8
  • Volker Neuhaus: The sensational novel of contemporary history in Germany. "Sir John Retcliffe" and his school . Berlin 1980. ISBN 3-503-01628-7
  • Gunter G. Sehm: Armand. Adventurer and poet. Outline of his life , in: Magazine for adventure, travel and entertainment literature. Issue 31 (3/1981), pp. 2-54.
  • Bernd Steinbrink: Adventure literature of the 19th century in Germany. Studies on a Neglected Genus . Tübingen 1983 (Studies on German Literature, edited by Wilfried Barner, Richard Brinkmann and Friedrich Sengle , Vol. 72). ISBN 3-484-18072-2

Web links

Wikisource: Fredéric Armand Strubberg  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For the definition of the term cf. Graf, p. 16.
  2. ↑ Bracksieck, plate 98.
  3. ↑ Barba, pp. 29-36; Augustin, pp. 2f .; Sehm pp. 6-10.
  4. ↑ Kearney, pp. 129f.
  5. ↑ Ibid., Pp. 131–148.
  6. ↑ address of Kassel 27.1860.
  7. ↑ Barba, p. 54; Augustine, p. 8; Sehm, p. 23.
  8. ↑ Barba, pp. 55f .; Augustine, p. 9; Sehm, p. 23.
  9. ↑ The grave is shown in Barba, plate after p. 60.
  10. ↑ Memories of the spiritual father of Karl May: Article on the website of the city of Gelnhausen
  11. ↑ On the definition of the adventure novel V. Klotz, pp. 9–31, cf. Steinbrink, pp. 1-14; on the Graf secret scheme, pp. 24–30.
  12. ↑ Debelius, pp. 531-533.
  13. ↑ Based on Augustin, GV, A. Klotz and insight into various library holdings and private collections.
personal data
SURNAME Strubberg, Fredéric Armand
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Strubberg, Friedrich Armand; Strubberg, Friedrich August; Armand
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German traveler to America and writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 18, 1806
PLACE OF BIRTH kassel
DATE OF DEATH April 3, 1889
Place of death Altenhaßlau