From Domestic Farce to Abolitionist Satire: Reinhold Solger's Reframing of the Union (1860)

Abstract

The Hon. Anodyne Humdrum; or, The Union Must and Shall be Preserved (1860), written by forty-eighter Reinhold Solger (1817-1866) seven years after he emigrated to the United States, reveals how a German-American writer took up his own German cultural material--in this case Der Reichstagsprofessor: Posse in einem Akt (The Professor in the Parliament: Farce in One Act, 1850)--and adapted it to a different national context. Shifting the focus from the failed revolution of 1848-1849 in the German territories to the abolition of slavery in the United States, Solger created a new literary satire that commented on but also sought to inform and influence political developments in his new national setting. The essay concludes with an annotated reproduction of the final scene of the English-language play.