Expanding Textual Topographies? Territory, Identity, and Race in Gustav Freytag’s Soll und Haben (1855) and its German-American sequel, Reinhold Solger’s Anton in Amerika (1862)

This article considers how the transnational circulation of German-language literature in the nineteenth century, specifically between the German-speaking countries and America, alters our understanding of the boundaries traditionally used to define what constitutes that literature. In particular, it investigates the representation of territory, identity, and race in two novels which spanned the Atlantic: Gustav Freytag’s German bestseller Soll und Haben (1855) and Reinhold Solger’s North American sequel to that novel, Anton in Amerika (1862). It first assesses the transnational value of an intertextual link between Freytag and Solger, questioning the extent to which German-American fiction remained ‘bound’ to its German forebears. It then explores the expansion of the territorial and ideological boundaries of German-language fiction in Solger’s novel, in particular its rendering of America through an ethnographic lens. The two novels, it argues, form a transnational nexus in which the boundaries of German-language fiction are both challenged, expanding across new territorial, formal, and linguistic frontiers, yet also re-inscribed in new forms of ethnographic, racial, and ideological containment.