Transatlantic Crossings and Transformations

German-American Cultural Transfer from the 18th to the End of the 19th Century

This volume attempts for the first time a comprehensive view of the momentous process of German-American cultural transfer during the 18th and 19th centuries, which played an important part in the formation of an American national and cultural identity, a process to which the New England Transcendentalists contributed some of the decisive ingredients, but which has largely escaped the attention of German and American scholarship. In each chapter a specific problem is treated systematically from a clearly defined perspective, deficiencies of existing translation theories are exposed, so that in the concluding chapters 13 and 14 (with an unpublished memorandum by Alexander von Humboldt) a cohesive view of the entire process emerges. A comprehensive bibliography will facilitate further scholarly pursuits.