Johann Adam Hartmann

The leather stocking fountain (1987) in memory of Johann Adam Hartmann in Edenkoben , Palatinate

Leather stocking memorial plaque (1952) with the wrong year of birth 1743 in Edenkoben, Palatinate

Johann Adam Hartmann (* 1748 in Edenkoben , Palatinate ; † April 5, 1836 in Herkimer County , New York ) was a trapper in North America . He is considered one of the models for the fictional character Leather Stocking by the American writer James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851).

Life

Johann Adam Hartmann emigrated to America from the Palatinate when he was 16 . On November 10, 1764, he disembarked the Boston immigrant ship from Rotterdam as Hans Adam Hartmann in Philadelphia . He became a noted hunter and trapper on the Mohawk River and learned hunting and wilderness survival techniques from the native Indians . Hartmann fought from 1775 to 1783 in the American War of Independence , where he is said to have used the scouting art he learned to advantage in the fight against the British colonial power. Hartmann took part in the fighting on the Mohawk in 1777 . He died impoverished in Herkimer County near New York in April 1836 at the age of 88.

At the time of Hartmann's death, the Indians had largely been driven out of the area on the Mohawk, and trapping in the nature, which was now organized according to European criteria, could no longer bring any income in the state of New York.

James Fenimore Cooper also lived in New York State and in his novels idealized the old way of life of the pioneers in the fight against nature, Indians and British colonial power. Its geographical proximity to Hartmann led in a German article from 1934 to the assumption that Hartmann's life story could have served as a template for Cooper's fictional characters. Cooper had also traveled to the Palatinate and spent some time near Edenkoben, Hartmann's original home.

In Edenkoben today a memorial plaque from 1952 and the leather stocking fountain by the sculptor Gernot Rumpf from 1987 commemorate Hartmann.

literature

• Carl Suesser: Was Lederstockpf a German? In: Westermannsmonthshefte . Illustrated German magazine. May 1934. Braunschweig 1934, pp. 245–249.
• Herbert Hartkopf: Trappers, Scouts & Pioneers from the Electoral Palatinate . Regional culture publishing house, Ubstadt 2009, ISBN 978-3-89735-601-6 .
• Alfred H. Kuby: Johann Adam Hartmann - The leather stocking from the Mohawk valley . In: Roland Paul (Ed.): 300 years of the Palatinate in America . Pfälzische Verlagsanstalt, 1983, pp. 155–157.

Web links

• In the wild west of the Palatinate , report in the radio station SR 3 Saarlandwelle on May 12, 2005

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Alfred H. Kuby: Johann Adam Hartmann - The leather stocking from the Mohawk valley. In: Roland Paul (Ed.): 300 years of the Palatinate in America. Pfälzische Verlagsanstalt, 1983, pp. 155–157
2. ↑ ^{a b} Carl Suesser: Was Lederstockpf a German? . In: Westermannsmonthshefte. Illustrated German magazine. May 1934. Braunschweig 1934, pp. 245–249.
3. ^ Ralph Beaver Strassburger, William John Hinke: Pennsylvania German Pioneers: A Publication of the Original Lists of Arrivals in the Port of Philadelphia from 1727 to 1808. Volume 1 - 1727-1775 . Pennsylvania German Society, Morristown (PA), 1934, p. 702