Friedrich Gerstäcker was a German traveler and novelist.

Biography

He was the son of Friedrich Gerstäcker (1790-1825), a celebrated opera singer. After being apprenticed to a commercial house, he learnt farming in Saxony

Saxony

The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....

. In 1837, however, just younger than 21 and having imbibed from Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...

 a taste for adventure, he went to America and wandered over a large part of the United States, supporting himself by whatever work came to hand.
He became fireman on a steamboat, deck hand, farmer, silversmith

Silversmith

A silversmith is a craftsperson who makes objects from silver or gold. The terms 'silversmith' and 'goldsmith' are not synonyms as the techniques, training, history, and guilds are or were largely the same but the end product varies greatly as does the scale of objects created.Silversmithing is the...

, and merchant

Merchant

A merchant is a businessperson who trades in commodities that were produced by others, in order to earn a profit.Merchants can be one of two types:# A wholesale merchant operates in the chain between producer and retail merchant...

. After wandering through most of the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, spending some time as a hunter and trapper in the Indian territory

Indian Territory

The Indian Territory, also known as the Indian Territories and the Indian Country, was land set aside within the United States for the settlement of American Indians...

, and in 1842 keeping a hotel at Point Coupée, Louisiana

Point Coupee, Louisiana

Point Coupee is the name of an unincorporated community located in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, United States. It is the home of St. Francis Chapel. It is located along Louisiana Highway 420, north of New Roads.-History:...

, he returned to Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 six adventurous years later in 1843.

To his great surprise, he found himself famous as an author. His mother had shown his diary, which he regularly sent home, and which contained descriptions of his adventures in the New World

New World

The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...

, to the editor of the Rosen, who published them in that periodical. These sketches having found favour with the public, Gerstäcker issued them in 1844 under the title Streif- und Jagdzüge durch die Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika. In 1845 his first novel, Die Regulatoren in Arkansas, appeared marking the start of a successful writing career. Henceforth the stream of his productiveness flowed on uninterruptedly.

From 1849 to 1852 Gerstäcker travelled round the world, visiting North and South America, Polynesia and Australia.
He experienced the California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 gold rush

Gold rush

A gold rush is a period of feverish migration of workers to an area that has had a dramatic discovery of gold. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and the United States, while smaller gold rushes took place elsewhere.In the 19th and early...

, crossed the South Pacific

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

 on a whaler

Whaler

A whaler is a specialized ship, designed for whaling, the catching and/or processing of whales. The former included the whale catcher, a steam or diesel-driven vessel with a harpoon gun mounted at its bows. The latter included such vessels as the sail or steam-driven whaleship of the 16th to early...

, and wandered through Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 and experienced a "gold rush" there. On his return to Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, he settled in Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

.

In 1860 he again went to South America, chiefly with a view to inspecting the German colonies there and reporting on the possibility of diverting the stream of German emigration in this direction. The result of his observations and experiences he recorded in Achtzehn Monate in Südamerika (1862). In 1862 he accompanied Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

 and Abyssinia

Ethiopian Empire

The Ethiopian Empire also known as Abyssinia, covered a geographical area that the present-day northern half of Ethiopia and Eritrea covers, and included in its peripheries Zeila, Djibouti, Yemen and Western Saudi Arabia...

, and on his return settled at Coburg

Coburg

Coburg is a town located on the Itz River in Bavaria, Germany. Its 2005 population was 42,015. Long one of the Thuringian states of the Wettin line, it joined with Bavaria by popular vote in 1920...

, where he wrote a number of novels descriptive of the scenes he had visited.

In 1867-1868 Gerstäcker again undertook a long journey, visiting North America, Venezuela and the West Indies. He visited Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 right after the collapse of the Second Mexican Empire

Second Mexican Empire

The Second Mexican Empire was the name of Mexico under the regime established from 1864 to 1867. It was created by Napoleon III of France, who attempted to use the Mexican adventure to recapture some of the grandeur of earlier Napoleonic times...

, a situation about which he wrote a few passages in one of his books. On his return lived first at Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

 and then at Brunswick.

Preparing a journey to India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 and Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, he suffered a fatal cerebral haemorrhage on May 31, 1872.

The widely traveled adventurer left an oeuvre of 44 volumes, which he edited himself for his Jena

Jena

Jena is a university city in central Germany on the river Saale. It has a population of approx. 103,000 and is the second largest city in the federal state of Thuringia, after Erfurt.-History:Jena was first mentioned in an 1182 document...

 publisher H. Costenoble. His stories and novels inspired numerous imitators: Karl May

Karl May

Karl Friedrich May was a popular German writer, noted mainly for adventure novels set in the American Old West, and similar books set in the Orient and Middle East . In addition, he wrote stories set in his native Germany, in China and in South America...

 profited from him and used landscape descriptions as well as subjects and characters. Even theatre

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 and movie companies borrowed from his work: the plot of the musical

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 Brigadoon (1954) was adapted from Gerstäcker's short story Germelshausen

Germelshausen

Germelshausen is a story by Friedrich Gerstäcker concerning a cursed village that sank into the earth long ago and is permitted to appear for only one day every century. The protagonist is a young artist who happens to traverse the locale at the time for the town's appearance. He encounters,...

.

The Friedrich-Gerstäcker-Gesellschaft e.V. (Fr. G. society) founded in 1978 in Braunschweig

Braunschweig

Braunschweig , is a city of 247,400 people, located in the federal-state of Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located north of the Harz mountains at the farthest navigable point of the Oker river, which connects to the North Sea via the rivers Aller and Weser....

offers more information about Gerstäcker and runs a museum about his work.

Works (Selection)

• Streif- und Jagdzüge durch die Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika (Rambling and Hunting in the United States of North America), 1844.
• Die Regulatoren in Arkansas (The Arkansas Regulators), 1845.
• Der deutschen Auswanderer Fahrten und Schicksale (Travels and Fates of the German Emigrants). Leipzig 1846.
• Mississippi-Bilder (Mississippi Images). 3 volumes, Leipzig 1847.
• Die Flußpiraten des Mississippi (Mississippi River Pirates). 3 volumes, Leipzig 1848.
• Gold. Ein californisches Lebensbild aus dem Jahre 1849 (Gold. An Image of Californian Life from the year 1848). 3 volumes, Jena 1858.
• Neue Reisen in Nordamerika, Mexiko, Ecuador, Westindien und Venezuela (New Travels in North America, Mexico, Ecuador, the West Indies, and Venezuela). 3 Volumes, Jena 1868.
• Black & White; In the Red River Swamps. Bilingual edition, translated and edited by Mark Gruettner and Robert Bareikis, Tintamarre, Shreveport 2006, ISBN 0975424432.

Secondary Literature

• Couch, Richard Allen: Friedrich Gerstäcker's novels of the American frontier. Dissertation, University of Iowa, Iowa City 1999 / UMI, Ann Arbor, MI 2000.
• Ostwald, Thomas: Friedrich Gerstäcker: Leben und Werk; Biographie eines Ruhelosen. Friedrich-Gerstäcker-Gesellschaft / Edition Corsar, Braunschweig 2007 (408 pp.), ISBN 3-925320-09-1 (major biography, in German language; the title translates: F. G.: Life and Work[s]; Biography of a restless one.).
• Sammons, Jeffrey L.: Ideology, nemesis, fantasy: Charles Seafield, Friedrich Gerstäcker, Karl May, and other German novelists of America. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1998, ISBN 080788121X.
• Woodson, Lerry Henry: American Negro Slavery in the works of Friederich Strubberg, Friedrich Gerstäcker and Otto Ruppers: A dissertation etc. Catholic University of America Press, Washington 1949.
• Zangerl, Anton: Friedrich Gerstäcker (1816-1872), Romane und Erzählungen: Struktur und Gehalt. Peter Lang: Bern 1999, ISBN 3906762769 (dissertation, in German; the title translates: F.G., novels and stories: structure and contents).

External links

Selected works at Project Gutenberg

• Germelshausen (English translation)
• Biography and extracts Gerstäcker Museum