The fascinating travelogue of a contemporary of Goethe who set out to report on the first democracy of modern age
He was a dazzling figure: Herzog Bernhard zu Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach. And not just be-cause he was raised by Herder, later participated in countless battles that would determine the fate of Europe (Wagram, the Battle of Leipzig) and was once even supposed to become King of Greece. Already as a young man, he was one of the first German aristocrats to travel to the fledgling American democracy, which represented an enormous political and social experiment at the time.
During his 14-month-long journey, he covered thousands of kilometers cross country, met committed democrats, “old” Americans, German emigrants, the American President and Native Americans. Driven by curiosity, he studied politics, technology, urban development and engineering, and visited prisons, poorhouses and proto-socialist housing projects. He returned to Germany full of impressions from this laboratory of modernity, which he shared in a published travel report as well as in conversations with people around him. In this way, he made a major impact German aristocracy’s idea of America, that of Goethe and the Germans in general.
Alexander Cammann and Adam Soboczynski have selected the most riveting and important passages from the duke’s original report, enriching them with connecting explanatory texts. In this way, they manage to open the key passages of a largely unknown, but highly interesting text to a wider circle of readers.
