They Came to the Holy Land

• The fascinating history of journeys to the Promised Land, from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century
• English sample translation by Lucy Jones available
• Recommended for translation by New Books in German

A multifaceted, thus far largely overlooked chapter in the encounter between West and East: Bernd Brunner writes of explorers, pilgrims, tourists – and fearless border-crossers in the homeland of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.

The Promised Land was a dream destination, a utopia, a promise – traveling there could free you of your sins, get you knighted, and offer hope of being cured of illness. Above all, however, it allowed you to get closer to the mystery that surrounded the place. For Christian pilgrims in particular, the journey was often very different from what they expected, and the gap between expectation and reality plunged more than a few into deep crisis – when, for example, they discovered that neither milk and honey nor water flowed in the arid landscape of Palestine.

An arena for the meeting of religions, a dreamland, a locus of projection, a place of fulfillment or disillusionment: Bernd Brunner has sifted through countless travel reports (of which he presents a fascinating and adventurous selection in this book) and has a lot to recount. And so we encounter Zionist visionaries and American missionaries, Templars and dragomans, aristocrats with crosses tattooed on their noses, pilgrims traveling alone, and many others.